4 ms·

The "selfish-lazy-greedy assholes" hypothesis doesn't do so well in the face of endocrinology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666 https://www.ncbi.nl

by alrs 8y ago

The "selfish-lazy-greedy assholes" hypothesis doesn't do so well in the face of endocrinology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666

jessaustin 8y ago
Yes but it feels so good to repeat it.
zorga 8y ago
That something is addictive doesn't absolve you of accountability; you still got addicted to it, you allowed it to happen, you are still responsible for yourself no matter the biology of how the effects work. With very very few exceptions, people are fat because they eat too much food, it's as simple as that. If you overeat (as an adult), you are to blame, it's not anyone else's fault. I agree with the OP.
- purple_ducks 8y ago
  > That something is addictive doesn't absolve you of accountability; you still got addicted to it A fantastic lesson in how to not understand addiction in the slightest. I look forward to a more mature response when you get past whatever juvenile phase your comment is the product of.
  - zorga 8y ago
    Look in the mirror, running around calling people juvenile is juvenile. I understand addiction just fine, addictions can be broken: that is a fact; you can break your body of any such dependency and that you can, means it's your responsibility to do so and thus your fault if you remain addicted. I understand addiction, you don't understand that we don't all then conclude from that that one has no culpability. Other people have different moral reasoning than you do, that they disagree with you about something does not mean it's because they don't understand it.
- hannasanarion 8y ago
  So you're saying that it was your choice to have your first bite of sugar, and you could have abstained? This kind of "abstinence-only personal fitness" might work fine for cigarettes, but kinda breaks down when it's stuff you've been fed since you were 5 weeks old and has been injected into most pre-prepared foods in a "sweetness war" that's lasted decades.
  - zorga 8y ago
    You are responsible for what you eat, you are responsible for breaking your own addictions. Pointing the finger at sugar sellers is just a way to wallow in the avoidance of accepting responsibility for yourself. Want to break a sugar addiction, stop eating, fast until you've broken all food addictions and shed much of the stored calories, and then build up a better diet when you start eating again.
    - cf498 8y ago
      I dont know if I would follow the argument as sugar being an addiction, but I do agree with your description in general and the accountability when it comes to beeing addicted. To be frank, if you dont want to consume a substance any longer, dont look to your dealer, look at yourself. Some people might find that a bit offensive, but its not really a moral argument but one of self determination. You chose to consume something and you choose to continue to consume that substance. The fact that it is a lot easier to start and to keep doing it then it is to stop, doesnt mean that you dont have a choice in the matter. The ods being stacked against you doesnt rob you of, or relieve you from, your freedom to choose. If I understand the the concept correctly, Alcoholics Anonymous is partly to blame here for that mindset, with the focus on your powerlessness. But if you want it or not, it still is your choice, not an easy one and not one with a right or wrong answer, but ultimately your choice. You are fundamentally not an object at the mercy of your circumstances, as easy as life would be that way.
- james_s_tayler 8y ago
  Yeah this argument feels very much to me like "women belong in the kitchen"
  - zorga 8y ago
    I fail to see it's remotely related.
    - james_s_tayler 8y ago
      It's a short-sighted, unhelpful attitude that's gone out of fashion because people realize how short-sighted and unhelpful it is.
      - zorga 8y ago
        Those people are ignorant; self responsibly never goes out of style.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- tomhoward 8y ago
  > it's not anyone else's fault Nobody's saying it's all somebody else's fault. The only valid position to hold about this topic is that it's complex and multi-faceted. Sure, self-discipline and personal choices are a factor - but the issue of what influences people's ability to exert self-discipline and make healthy choices is a vast and little-understood topic in its own right. Whatever the case, if a child is raised on a high-carb/low-fat diet from a young age because their parents and schools accept the official advice, the carb-dependent metabolism they end up with by the time they reach adulthood will most certainly complicate their ability to make healthy choices. > you still got addicted to it, you allowed it to happen Societies everywhere restrict access to alcohol and tobacco to minors because it's accepted that minors are not capable of making fully-informed choices. Why do you hold a different position regarding sugar?
  - zorga 8y ago
    > Nobody's saying it's all somebody else's fault. Yes they are. > The only valid position to hold about this topic is that it's complex and multi-faceted. Incorrect. That's a valid position, it's certainly not the only one. > the carb-dependent metabolism they end up with by the time they reach adulthood will most certainly complicate their ability to make healthy choices. Nonsense, your metabolism is not set in stone, they can simply change their diets and if they don't, no one is to blame but them for their continued unhealthiness. > Why do you hold a different position regarding sugar? Sugar isn't remotely comparable to those two; they're restricted to minors because they're lethal drugs, sugar is not.
    - tomhoward 8y ago
      > Yes they are. Please link to their comments. >Incorrect. That's a valid position, it's certainly not the only one. It is when you're talking about an organic system like a human body or any evolved system in nature. > they can simply change their diets and if they don't, no one is to blame but them No they can't; this is the entire point. If they could, they would, and metabolic illness would simply cease to be a problem rather than being one of the most pernicious problems in all of medicine. > they're restricted to minors because they're lethal drugs, sugar is not The evidence suggests otherwise. But what's it to you anyway? What's your motivation for being utterly dogmatic and uncompromising, rather than engaging in a good-faith examination of the evidence?
- sctb 8y ago
  You're still posting flamewar-style (unsubstantive and inflammatory) after we asked you many times to stop. Since this isn't the first account you've done this with, we've banned this one.
johnkpaul 8y ago
I wish there was a definitive guide to how to respond to that hypothesis. Many many hn commenters and many outside of the internet normal people strongly align with the obese-are-lazy narrative and I’ve basically given up arguing with them.
- koboll 8y ago
  "Lazy" obscures the addiction component, yes. But no other addiction has such an accessible and accepted narrative that the addiction is not your fault, there's nothing you can do about it, and so you shouldn't even try to change.
  - alrs 8y ago
    I'm not obese, but I was. There is a weird Internet cult that celebrates obesity, but I think plenty who live in the "nothing you can do" camp internalized bad advice, got nowhere with it, and gave up.
    - johnkpaul 8y ago
      I was in that "nothing you can do camp" for almost 30 years. Until I learned that I was a carbohydrate addict and carbohydrates are not necessary to live, I gave up completely. Giving up is the only option after trying and failing diets and exercise programs your whole life. I started dieting when I was ~6 years old.
- perfmode 8y ago
  A generalized solution would be incredibly powerful for putting to rest these tired, ostensibly plausible clichés.
hypogonadism 8y ago
How does your sugary endocrinology align with OTC NSAID use? Comorbid or nah? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29311296/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29311296/
- alrs 8y ago
  I think that there is no shortage of endocrine disruptors in our environment. Sugar is a good problem to have, as you can opt-out. It's a lot tougher to isolate yourself from pesticides, plastics, fire retardants, and the whole host of other modern pollutants.
paavoova 8y ago
This doesn't change the fact that the underlying mechanism of weight gain is a net caloric surplus over a given period of time, which is (hypothetically, at least) addressable without addiction ever coming into the discussion. But if sugar/food addiction is relevant, there should be some data on its effects on non-obese, physically active individuals who maintain a lifestyle that allows them to burn enough calories to offset the caloric effects of sugar consumption. What you linked doesn't mention obesity, yet you're conflating addiction with obesity in your response.
- 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
  > This doesn't change the fact that the underlying mechanism of weight gain is a net caloric surplus over a given period of time That's a necessary condition, but it doesn't really represent a useful model of the system of interest. It's a bit like saying that a car moves forward because the engine is hotter than the surrounding environment.
  - paavoova 8y ago
    I don't quite follow your analogy. I think everyone understands that the more you drive a car, the more fuel it consumes, and this being analogous to biological functions. > That's a necessary condition And addiction isn't, it's merely a contributing factor. Like I wrote, how do you factor in non-obese sugar/food addicts, and, vice versa, obese people who don't suffer from food addiction? Obesity doesn't necessitate food addiction, it could be as simple as neglecting to be physically active or other poor lifestyle choices. Placing unsubstantiated importance on the role of addiction is just as baseless as disregarding all obese people as lazy. Any individual can take measures to improve their lifestyle habits and lose weight - how is this not of "interest"? Because a doctor can't prescribe it in a pill?
    - 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
      > I don't quite follow your analogy. I think everyone understands that the more you drive a car, the more fuel it consumes, and this being analogous to biological functions. The point of my analogy isn't that I was crying out for a slightly better car analogy. My point is this: if there's a problem with someone operating a system, it's usually unhelpful to model the system as a black box that happens to follow some universal physical law. It's not necessarily useless to do that, but it's unlikely to capture the aspects of the system that people directly experience and care about. > Obesity doesn't necessitate food addiction, it could be as simple as neglecting to be physically active or other poor lifestyle choices. Nobody in this thread claimed (or even suggested, by my reading) that food addiction was necessary for obesity. The description of "poor lifestyle choices" elides any serious analysis of specifically which behavior patterns are involved and what factors drive them. This is especially true when obesity is increasing across large populations. I don't think it's remotely sufficient to suppose that the behavior of hundreds of millions of people changed in similar ways in the span of ~50 years simply because they all spontaneously made unrelated individual decisions to have different preferences. I doubt that you believe this either, so I don't understand why you've arrived at this description as though it's an alternative to addiction and not just a larger category or higher level of abstraction that includes it. > Any individual can take measures to improve their lifestyle habits and lose weight - how is this not of "interest"? Of course such measures would be of interest; my objection to your previous post is, in some sense, that it failed to describe any.
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Related: Urban planning used to take human health into consideration as well and mostly has stopped doing do (at least in the US). People (in America) who can't find walkable neighborhoods with residential near their jobs end up spending unhealthy amounts of time behind the wheel and often hate it. There are lots of studies about how sitting too much, whether at a desk job or in your vehicle, does the things to you which are not adequately reversed by hitting the gym. Desk jobs used to be uncommon back when most people worked on a farm. It is within my lifetime that this changed. When I was born, more than half of all people had physically hard jobs on farms, iirc.

by alrs 8y ago

The "selfish-lazy-greedy assholes" hypothesis doesn't do so well in the face of endocrinology. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15987666

jessaustin 8y ago

Yes but it feels so good to repeat it.

zorga 8y ago

That something is addictive doesn't absolve you of accountability; you still got addicted to it, you allowed it to happen, you are still responsible for yourself no matter the biology of how the effects work. With very very few exceptions, people are fat because they eat too much food, it's as simple as that. If you overeat (as an adult), you are to blame, it's not anyone else's fault. I agree with the OP.

purple_ducks 8y ago
> That something is addictive doesn't absolve you of accountability; you still got addicted to it A fantastic lesson in how to not understand addiction in the slightest. I look forward to a more mature response when you get past whatever juvenile phase your comment is the product of.
- zorga 8y ago
  Look in the mirror, running around calling people juvenile is juvenile. I understand addiction just fine, addictions can be broken: that is a fact; you can break your body of any such dependency and that you can, means it's your responsibility to do so and thus your fault if you remain addicted. I understand addiction, you don't understand that we don't all then conclude from that that one has no culpability. Other people have different moral reasoning than you do, that they disagree with you about something does not mean it's because they don't understand it.
hannasanarion 8y ago
So you're saying that it was your choice to have your first bite of sugar, and you could have abstained? This kind of "abstinence-only personal fitness" might work fine for cigarettes, but kinda breaks down when it's stuff you've been fed since you were 5 weeks old and has been injected into most pre-prepared foods in a "sweetness war" that's lasted decades.
- zorga 8y ago
  You are responsible for what you eat, you are responsible for breaking your own addictions. Pointing the finger at sugar sellers is just a way to wallow in the avoidance of accepting responsibility for yourself. Want to break a sugar addiction, stop eating, fast until you've broken all food addictions and shed much of the stored calories, and then build up a better diet when you start eating again.
  - cf498 8y ago
    I dont know if I would follow the argument as sugar being an addiction, but I do agree with your description in general and the accountability when it comes to beeing addicted. To be frank, if you dont want to consume a substance any longer, dont look to your dealer, look at yourself. Some people might find that a bit offensive, but its not really a moral argument but one of self determination. You chose to consume something and you choose to continue to consume that substance. The fact that it is a lot easier to start and to keep doing it then it is to stop, doesnt mean that you dont have a choice in the matter. The ods being stacked against you doesnt rob you of, or relieve you from, your freedom to choose. If I understand the the concept correctly, Alcoholics Anonymous is partly to blame here for that mindset, with the focus on your powerlessness. But if you want it or not, it still is your choice, not an easy one and not one with a right or wrong answer, but ultimately your choice. You are fundamentally not an object at the mercy of your circumstances, as easy as life would be that way.
james_s_tayler 8y ago
Yeah this argument feels very much to me like "women belong in the kitchen"
- zorga 8y ago
  I fail to see it's remotely related.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    It's a short-sighted, unhelpful attitude that's gone out of fashion because people realize how short-sighted and unhelpful it is.
    - zorga 8y ago
      Those people are ignorant; self responsibly never goes out of style.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tomhoward 8y ago
> it's not anyone else's fault Nobody's saying it's all somebody else's fault. The only valid position to hold about this topic is that it's complex and multi-faceted. Sure, self-discipline and personal choices are a factor - but the issue of what influences people's ability to exert self-discipline and make healthy choices is a vast and little-understood topic in its own right. Whatever the case, if a child is raised on a high-carb/low-fat diet from a young age because their parents and schools accept the official advice, the carb-dependent metabolism they end up with by the time they reach adulthood will most certainly complicate their ability to make healthy choices. > you still got addicted to it, you allowed it to happen Societies everywhere restrict access to alcohol and tobacco to minors because it's accepted that minors are not capable of making fully-informed choices. Why do you hold a different position regarding sugar?
- zorga 8y ago
  > Nobody's saying it's all somebody else's fault. Yes they are. > The only valid position to hold about this topic is that it's complex and multi-faceted. Incorrect. That's a valid position, it's certainly not the only one. > the carb-dependent metabolism they end up with by the time they reach adulthood will most certainly complicate their ability to make healthy choices. Nonsense, your metabolism is not set in stone, they can simply change their diets and if they don't, no one is to blame but them for their continued unhealthiness. > Why do you hold a different position regarding sugar? Sugar isn't remotely comparable to those two; they're restricted to minors because they're lethal drugs, sugar is not.
  - tomhoward 8y ago
    > Yes they are. Please link to their comments. >Incorrect. That's a valid position, it's certainly not the only one. It is when you're talking about an organic system like a human body or any evolved system in nature. > they can simply change their diets and if they don't, no one is to blame but them No they can't; this is the entire point. If they could, they would, and metabolic illness would simply cease to be a problem rather than being one of the most pernicious problems in all of medicine. > they're restricted to minors because they're lethal drugs, sugar is not The evidence suggests otherwise. But what's it to you anyway? What's your motivation for being utterly dogmatic and uncompromising, rather than engaging in a good-faith examination of the evidence?
sctb 8y ago
You're still posting flamewar-style (unsubstantive and inflammatory) after we asked you many times to stop. Since this isn't the first account you've done this with, we've banned this one.

johnkpaul 8y ago

I wish there was a definitive guide to how to respond to that hypothesis. Many many hn commenters and many outside of the internet normal people strongly align with the obese-are-lazy narrative and I’ve basically given up arguing with them.

koboll 8y ago
"Lazy" obscures the addiction component, yes. But no other addiction has such an accessible and accepted narrative that the addiction is not your fault, there's nothing you can do about it, and so you shouldn't even try to change.
- alrs 8y ago
  I'm not obese, but I was. There is a weird Internet cult that celebrates obesity, but I think plenty who live in the "nothing you can do" camp internalized bad advice, got nowhere with it, and gave up.
  - johnkpaul 8y ago
    I was in that "nothing you can do camp" for almost 30 years. Until I learned that I was a carbohydrate addict and carbohydrates are not necessary to live, I gave up completely. Giving up is the only option after trying and failing diets and exercise programs your whole life. I started dieting when I was ~6 years old.
perfmode 8y ago
A generalized solution would be incredibly powerful for putting to rest these tired, ostensibly plausible clichés.

hypogonadism 8y ago

How does your sugary endocrinology align with OTC NSAID use? Comorbid or nah? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29311296/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/29311296/

alrs 8y ago
I think that there is no shortage of endocrine disruptors in our environment. Sugar is a good problem to have, as you can opt-out. It's a lot tougher to isolate yourself from pesticides, plastics, fire retardants, and the whole host of other modern pollutants.

paavoova 8y ago

This doesn't change the fact that the underlying mechanism of weight gain is a net caloric surplus over a given period of time, which is (hypothetically, at least) addressable without addiction ever coming into the discussion. But if sugar/food addiction is relevant, there should be some data on its effects on non-obese, physically active individuals who maintain a lifestyle that allows them to burn enough calories to offset the caloric effects of sugar consumption. What you linked doesn't mention obesity, yet you're conflating addiction with obesity in your response.

0xcde4c3db 8y ago
> This doesn't change the fact that the underlying mechanism of weight gain is a net caloric surplus over a given period of time That's a necessary condition, but it doesn't really represent a useful model of the system of interest. It's a bit like saying that a car moves forward because the engine is hotter than the surrounding environment.
- paavoova 8y ago
  I don't quite follow your analogy. I think everyone understands that the more you drive a car, the more fuel it consumes, and this being analogous to biological functions. > That's a necessary condition And addiction isn't, it's merely a contributing factor. Like I wrote, how do you factor in non-obese sugar/food addicts, and, vice versa, obese people who don't suffer from food addiction? Obesity doesn't necessitate food addiction, it could be as simple as neglecting to be physically active or other poor lifestyle choices. Placing unsubstantiated importance on the role of addiction is just as baseless as disregarding all obese people as lazy. Any individual can take measures to improve their lifestyle habits and lose weight - how is this not of "interest"? Because a doctor can't prescribe it in a pill?
  - 0xcde4c3db 8y ago
    > I don't quite follow your analogy. I think everyone understands that the more you drive a car, the more fuel it consumes, and this being analogous to biological functions. The point of my analogy isn't that I was crying out for a slightly better car analogy. My point is this: if there's a problem with someone operating a system, it's usually unhelpful to model the system as a black box that happens to follow some universal physical law. It's not necessarily useless to do that, but it's unlikely to capture the aspects of the system that people directly experience and care about. > Obesity doesn't necessitate food addiction, it could be as simple as neglecting to be physically active or other poor lifestyle choices. Nobody in this thread claimed (or even suggested, by my reading) that food addiction was necessary for obesity. The description of "poor lifestyle choices" elides any serious analysis of specifically which behavior patterns are involved and what factors drive them. This is especially true when obesity is increasing across large populations. I don't think it's remotely sufficient to suppose that the behavior of hundreds of millions of people changed in similar ways in the span of ~50 years simply because they all spontaneously made unrelated individual decisions to have different preferences. I doubt that you believe this either, so I don't understand why you've arrived at this description as though it's an alternative to addiction and not just a larger category or higher level of abstraction that includes it. > Any individual can take measures to improve their lifestyle habits and lose weight - how is this not of "interest"? Of course such measures would be of interest; my objection to your previous post is, in some sense, that it failed to describe any.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

Related: Urban planning used to take human health into consideration as well and mostly has stopped doing do (at least in the US). People (in America) who can't find walkable neighborhoods with residential near their jobs end up spending unhealthy amounts of time behind the wheel and often hate it. There are lots of studies about how sitting too much, whether at a desk job or in your vehicle, does the things to you which are not adequately reversed by hitting the gym. Desk jobs used to be uncommon back when most people worked on a farm. It is within my lifetime that this changed. When I was born, more than half of all people had physically hard jobs on farms, iirc.