4 ms·

It reminds me of the Anna Karenia (sp?) principle. Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Most fit people are fit the s

It reminds me of the Anna Karenia (sp?) principle. Happy families are all alike, every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. Most fit people are fit the same way. They have the same body proportions, respond the same to anesthesia, and can be maneuvered into the same positions that doctors train for and are used to. If you're obese, you accumulate fat in different ways, you respond differently to medication and anesthesia, because you just accumulate in different patterns. Doctors don't train on obese patients because they're all different, so it's hard to get a standard operating procedure. They also don't train on obese patients because until now, they've been a vanishingly small proportional of the population. Take a look at vintage photographs of "fat men" in carnivals in the beginning of the 1900s. You see people like that all over the place these days. Cheap abundant food and obesity has only recently been a problem.

AstralStorm 10y ago
The real question then is why. It is certainly not just access to abundant cheap food - otherwise you would see more rich fat people in the past. There is probably more than factor and actual epidemiologists should be able to disentangle and find most of them, especially as records are available. It is either something tied to methods of agriculture and farming or appearance of some sort of endocrine disruptor that is nowadays abundant.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  I'm pretty sure it's access to abundant cheap food. With a few exceptions (ahem, Mexico) most obesity crises are in well developed countries. Even so, cheap abundant food is definitely much more of a thing in Central/Latin/South America than it used to be. Also, a lot of corporation have spent a lot of time and energy dressing up cheap ingredients to directly stimulate our pleasure sensors. In the past sweet, salt, and fatty food were hard to come by and rather expensive, so you'd gorge when you could. These days, the cheapest procesed foods are saltier, sweeter, and fattier than anything in the 1800s. It's doubtful that it's tied to methods of farming or an endocrine disruptor. Unless you're talking about food subsidies for cheap grains. We just like salty, greasy, sweet food cause it used to be rare, and now it's not.
  - AstralStorm 10y ago
    I am pretty sure access to food is a prerequisite, but not a direct causative agent. Otherwise everyone in the West would be obese today, not 1 in 5. And yes, manufacturing practices may be truly causing this, coupled with more hectic but sedentary lifestyle preventing people from cooking properly (it takes time and care), compounded by lower quality of basic ingredients and higher levels of stress. It is highly unfair and unjust to throw it also onto a single person to invert, especially a sufferer.
    - jimmywanger 10y ago
      > And yes, manufacturing practices may be truly causing this How? Are you talking about pharmaceuticals used in factory farming, trans fats, what? > coupled with more hectic but sedentary lifestyle preventing people from cooking properly (it takes time and care) It does not take that much time or care. The choice is yours. You can either watch an episode of Seinfeld on the couch, or spend time on your feet and cook dinner and lose weight and feel healthier. > It is highly unfair and unjust to throw it also onto a single person to invert, especially a sufferer. Fairness and justice are two concepts the universe does not care about. And how is it unfair and unjust? Once you accept that your suffering, in this case, is based on decisions you've made (remember 4/5 people are not obese in the west, placing you in the lowest 20 percentile.) you can start changing that. Also, these things don't just happen to you. You still have a choice in the great majority of situations.

AstralStorm 10y ago

The real question then is why. It is certainly not just access to abundant cheap food - otherwise you would see more rich fat people in the past. There is probably more than factor and actual epidemiologists should be able to disentangle and find most of them, especially as records are available. It is either something tied to methods of agriculture and farming or appearance of some sort of endocrine disruptor that is nowadays abundant.

jimmywanger 10y ago
I'm pretty sure it's access to abundant cheap food. With a few exceptions (ahem, Mexico) most obesity crises are in well developed countries. Even so, cheap abundant food is definitely much more of a thing in Central/Latin/South America than it used to be. Also, a lot of corporation have spent a lot of time and energy dressing up cheap ingredients to directly stimulate our pleasure sensors. In the past sweet, salt, and fatty food were hard to come by and rather expensive, so you'd gorge when you could. These days, the cheapest procesed foods are saltier, sweeter, and fattier than anything in the 1800s. It's doubtful that it's tied to methods of farming or an endocrine disruptor. Unless you're talking about food subsidies for cheap grains. We just like salty, greasy, sweet food cause it used to be rare, and now it's not.
- AstralStorm 10y ago
  I am pretty sure access to food is a prerequisite, but not a direct causative agent. Otherwise everyone in the West would be obese today, not 1 in 5. And yes, manufacturing practices may be truly causing this, coupled with more hectic but sedentary lifestyle preventing people from cooking properly (it takes time and care), compounded by lower quality of basic ingredients and higher levels of stress. It is highly unfair and unjust to throw it also onto a single person to invert, especially a sufferer.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    > And yes, manufacturing practices may be truly causing this How? Are you talking about pharmaceuticals used in factory farming, trans fats, what? > coupled with more hectic but sedentary lifestyle preventing people from cooking properly (it takes time and care) It does not take that much time or care. The choice is yours. You can either watch an episode of Seinfeld on the couch, or spend time on your feet and cook dinner and lose weight and feel healthier. > It is highly unfair and unjust to throw it also onto a single person to invert, especially a sufferer. Fairness and justice are two concepts the universe does not care about. And how is it unfair and unjust? Once you accept that your suffering, in this case, is based on decisions you've made (remember 4/5 people are not obese in the west, placing you in the lowest 20 percentile.) you can start changing that. Also, these things don't just happen to you. You still have a choice in the great majority of situations.