The European royal families were and are to an extent festering pools of incest and scandals.

The pre-W.W.II scandal with the British monarchs is nothing new. Every royal family has a secret service that hides the dirty laundry. Leopold and his Congo were exposed after years of campaigns. The scandal of the "Cultuurstelsel" in the Dutch Indies was exposed by angry civil servant turned author Multatuli and even then the royal family was able to distance itself from the "affair."

That is the cost of a monarchy: they can screw (other and their own) people and (agencies and) the army protects them. That is of course until revolutions and civil wars break out that lead to things like a Magna Carta, guillotines, symbolic power(1848) or death and mutilation (1917).   

Yeah or this one.
http://www.suckfit.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/obesitychart.png

Damn, what happened in 1970?

Damn, what happened in 1970?

Sugar happened.

Quote from: Deep Funk on Today at 02:57:15 AM
Sugar happened.

Specifically High Fructose Corn Syrup first marketed in the early 1970's. And probably the explosion in fast food chains and two income households. Less home cooked food, more fast food for dinner.  I have a couple of younger relatives that never cook other than cookies. Fast food is all they eat.

Check, check, and check. We already had cheap(-ish) sugar since we "annexed" Hawaii, but those government corn subsidies really started paying off once ADM figured out how to successfully mass-market HFCS. Also, the baby-boomers (finally) started graduating from college, and all the dang uppity women put on shoes and stepped out of the kitchen. Its been a downhill slide ever since.