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Making poor eating decisions can cause bodily harm much quicker and more severe than repeated concussions from playing football. Should the default position al

Making poor eating decisions can cause bodily harm much quicker and more severe than repeated concussions from playing football. Should the default position also be that we don't deem adults to be capable of weighing the risks when choosing what food to eat?

EliRivers 8y ago
Yes, that does seem to be what the evidence indicates. People generally rate their diet and exercise as significantly better than it really is, leading them to significantly underestimate the risks to themselves.
asveikau 8y ago
You brought this up as an "ah ha! I caught you in your absurdity!" kind of thing. However it is absolutely true that the US needs to better regulate food ingredients to shield consumers from their bad decisions. Right now the industry is set up to exploit how easy it is to make those poor decisions and become addicted to them, and most food ingredients for sale are consequently more calorific than they need to be. (Some personal context for me: I lost 100 lbs over 2017-2018. So I have some experience both unwittingly falling in the trap and successfully getting out of it, the latter part seems pretty rare from what I can tell.)
- tengbretson 8y ago
  I don't think we share enough common ground to have any further useful conversation about this.
  - asveikau 8y ago
    OK. I will ask this of you though. I don't know if you are in the US to witness this or somewhere else. But next time you are in a crowded restaurant where all the portions are in the thousands of calories.. Look around you at all the people wolfing it down. And maybe ask: how many of these people do this regularly? How much exercise do they get to balance it out? How did these people get into this cycle, binging day after day? How irritated would they get if you took it away from them? Is it their fault, or are they stuck in some kind of bad loop? Was that cycle entered into well informed or something else? Losing 100 lbs caused me to think about this, and the answers are very depressing. Even for any given meal or ingredient, there has been a change. Look at videos of 70s and 80s America, the average person is way more fit. Or, to take a random example, I re-read the novel "Cannery Row" a few years ago. Now, it's fiction, though based on some real people. It takes place in the first half of the 20th century, and one character is said to drive regularly from Monterey to Los Angeles, a sedentary activity, stopping several times for burgers. Not once does it say he was overweight, nor do I think the real person he was based on was. Could it be that a 1940s burger was better for you than a burger today?

EliRivers 8y ago

Yes, that does seem to be what the evidence indicates. People generally rate their diet and exercise as significantly better than it really is, leading them to significantly underestimate the risks to themselves.

asveikau 8y ago

You brought this up as an "ah ha! I caught you in your absurdity!" kind of thing. However it is absolutely true that the US needs to better regulate food ingredients to shield consumers from their bad decisions. Right now the industry is set up to exploit how easy it is to make those poor decisions and become addicted to them, and most food ingredients for sale are consequently more calorific than they need to be. (Some personal context for me: I lost 100 lbs over 2017-2018. So I have some experience both unwittingly falling in the trap and successfully getting out of it, the latter part seems pretty rare from what I can tell.)

tengbretson 8y ago
I don't think we share enough common ground to have any further useful conversation about this.
- asveikau 8y ago
  OK. I will ask this of you though. I don't know if you are in the US to witness this or somewhere else. But next time you are in a crowded restaurant where all the portions are in the thousands of calories.. Look around you at all the people wolfing it down. And maybe ask: how many of these people do this regularly? How much exercise do they get to balance it out? How did these people get into this cycle, binging day after day? How irritated would they get if you took it away from them? Is it their fault, or are they stuck in some kind of bad loop? Was that cycle entered into well informed or something else? Losing 100 lbs caused me to think about this, and the answers are very depressing. Even for any given meal or ingredient, there has been a change. Look at videos of 70s and 80s America, the average person is way more fit. Or, to take a random example, I re-read the novel "Cannery Row" a few years ago. Now, it's fiction, though based on some real people. It takes place in the first half of the 20th century, and one character is said to drive regularly from Monterey to Los Angeles, a sedentary activity, stopping several times for burgers. Not once does it say he was overweight, nor do I think the real person he was based on was. Could it be that a 1940s burger was better for you than a burger today?