Abstract

In the United States, recent studies have demonstrated weight gain over Thanksgiving contributing to a significant portion of annual national weight gain. Understanding the social context of how Thanksgiving celebrations were perceived is critical for preventing and reducing excess weight during this time. Energy intake from present-day data was back-calculated from body weight data collected in participants before and after Thanksgiving. Similar calculations were performed in studies that also included Christmas. A Latent Dirichlet Allocation analysis of topics scraped from Twitter under the hashtag #thanksgiving was performed. The top topics and search queries from Google Trends on Thanksgiving 2020 were also identified. Since 1621, the social context of Thanksgiving has evolved from a focus on prayer and celebrated gratitude to a focus on food, football, and retail. What is served on Thanksgiving and its energy content has not substantially changed since the late 18th century. On the other hand, body weights and mean energy intake have steadily increased over time with the most rapid increases occurring since 1941. The shift in the social context of Thanksgiving and other factors of an existing obesogenic environment have likely combined to generate increased energy intake and weight gain during Thanksgiving.

摘要

在美国，最近的研究表明，感恩节期间体重增加占全国年度体重增加的很大一部分。了解感恩节庆祝活动的社会背景对于在此期间预防和减少超重至关重要。当前数据的能量摄入量是从感恩节前后参与者收集的体重数据中反算出来的。在包括圣诞节在内的研究中也进行了类似的计算。对从 Twitter 上以 #thanksgiving 为标签的主题进行了潜在狄利克雷分配分析。还确定了 2020 年感恩节 Google 趋势中的热门话题和搜索查询。自 1621 年以来，感恩节的社会背景已经从专注于祈祷和庆祝感恩发展到专注于食物，足球和零售。自 18 世纪末以来，感恩节供应的食物及其能量含量并没有发生重大变化。另一方面，随着时间的推移，体重和平均能量摄入量稳步增加，出现了自 1941 年以来最快的增长。感恩节社会背景的转变和现有肥胖环境的其他因素可能共同导致能量摄入量和感恩节期间体重增加。