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I am sorry, but this is nothing less than an abomination. Drugs, drugs, drugs. More drugs. Let's drug everyone. Let's have everyone popping pills for everyt

I am sorry, but this is nothing less than an abomination. Drugs, drugs, drugs. More drugs. Let's drug everyone. Let's have everyone popping pills for everything. Why not. And make millions, billions, while we are at it. And your sob story? Do you think you are the only person in the world who has had to deal with stress? This is ridiculous. How about this for stress: My grandparents were genocide survivors. They saw portions of their family killed in the most horrific ways. And they somehow managed that and moved on. Me, personally, I've had one pretty horrific business failure that drove me to the edge of understanding why people take their own lives after ending-up in the hospital twice due to stress. WE DO NOT NEED PILLS! Yes, I am yelling. We need action on better food quality and education. People are filling themselves up with nothing but crap. Ketogenic diets and balanced living work, 100% of the the time. Exercise and activity is the magic "pill" that manages stress. Frankly, I am astounded that YC would fund and support something like this. I don't care about your credentials and sob story. This is an abomination. Yes, you are likely to make billions. Congratulations. You are not going to fix a damn thing. All you are going to accomplish is to get millions of people hooked on yet another "once daily" legal drug of some sort. If you truly cared about helping people you would work towards fixing what's actually wrong rather than getting millions of people to pop pills. What when they stop? Huh? They will have developed no good habits at all. They will not have a clue as to how to manage stress. They sure as fuck are not going to understand that exercise is important and necessary. They are not going to become discerning about what they eat. And our industrialized toxic food industry isn't going to change a thing. They will pop your pills as they suck-in a two liter drink with insane amounts of sugar and inhale cheap carbohydrates in their burritos, burgers, pizza, etc. Weight management isn't at all about eating less. It's about not eating food that actively want to slowly kill you and, yes, engaging in a modicum of exercise in order to deal with insulin resistance, keep bones strong, etc. I've had my own battles with this. Lots of people do. Until I finally listened to my wife (an MD). So I proposed an experiment: I would do no exercise at all other than taking walks with her a few evenings per week. She was pushing me to take-up a low carb ketogenic-style diet. As an engineer, I wanted to isolate exercise from a change in eating habits. That's what we did. And the results were hard to ignore. It was slow going, but the fat just came off --without having to run a marathon every day to burn extra calories. I eat as much as I want. No restrictions other than "don't eat garbage/sugars/simple carbs, etc.". After dropping two pant sizes and feeling "normal" again I can now go for the finishing touch and add exercise to this in the form of strength training. The most important outcome was to reeducate myself about what and how I should be eating. That's it. It's as simple as that. No drug is going to do that. Ever. Unless the intent is to hook people for their $149 per month in perpetuity. Sorry, to take such an aggressive tone. This is, to use the term, deplorable. Shame on you. Invest the money educating people on how NOT to use a drug to improve their lives. Pills isn't a long term sustainable solution. You are bound to ruin more lives than you save. And you are not going to do anything about improving the quality of the food that our population consumes. Think of kids. Their food choices --particularly in the case of lower education parents-- boil down to choices between different kinds of toxic garbage. By the time they leave high school they have already imprinted horrible habits and done damage to their bodies. And now you show up and say "Take this pill...we will save you". Sick.

dang 5y ago
Of course obesity is an emotional topic but attacking someone personally about it is way, way beyond the pale. Breaking the HN guidelines will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are, or feel you are, about obesity and other topics. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- banned2321 5y ago
  Dang, honestly, fuck you for censoring that post.
- robomartin 5y ago
  Funding a company to effectively hook people on pills by taking advantage of their vulnerability, mental state and frustration is nothing less than profane. It's one thing to turn people into ad-clicking drones, quite another to hook them on drugs when they do not need them. You might object to my lashing out. Well, sometimes it is important to take a strong stance. And, yes, sometimes those promoting magical solutions are culpable and should be scolded. Am I wrong? I do not think so. Nobody needs pills to lose weight. Nobody. That is a matter of both biology and physics. I'll defy anyone to prove otherwise. Have we become insane? The problem is that we have industrialized bad food choices and have created a marketplace where it is actually difficult to escape stuff that is bad for you. Just last night we were at a restaurant. A few tables over was a family where every single member, kids included, were twice the size of a normal and healthy person. Their table was full of all of the wrong choices. And, on top of that, large free-refill glasses of soft drinks. At the end of their meal they all had cake and ice cream. Wow. My youngest kids just started in-person high school again. The school has free food for every student. Its absolute garbage. The word "junk" doesn't even begin to cover it. The healthiest thing they have is apple juice, with nearly 40 grams of sugar per serving. My kids pack a lunch, just a simple sandwich them make themselves every morning. Not very expensive at all. Not hard to make. We don't make them, the kids do and have been doing so for years. They also drink water. We have no soft drinks at home. The kids grew up drinking water and have no cravings whatsoever for soft drinks, candy, ice cream, etc. Sure, we occasionally have the stuff at parties, but that's the exception rather than the rule. And, no, they are not deprived. They simply do not care for the stuff because they did not become addicted to any of it as they grew up. Every family relying on the State/City/County/School district to feed their kids is, in return, having their kids poisoned. Worse yet, their kids are being programmed to become addicted to food that is absolutely horrible for them. When they come out of school they are well on their way to diabetes and other problems. Pills? Please. Our kids are coming into adulthood biologically programmed for high levels of sugar and carbohydrate consumption. It's all they eat since they are done with breast feeding. No pill is going to fix that level of programming. People who reach high levels of obesity are susceptible to the kinds of things that are going to cause them to spend money popping all kinds of pills every day. They are suffering, lots of them are depressed and our government and regulatory agencies have failed them --which is part of the reason they got there. We don't need pills. The problem is systemic. Fund startups who will deal with this and not ones that are no different from any other yo-yo diet program by any other name. Does anyone really think someone is going to change life-long habits after popping pills for a year? What is far more likely to happen is that they will become dependent on said pills, which is great for a revenue stream and a billion dollar exit to a pharmaceutical giant, not so great for the individual. What is beyond the pale here isn't my choice of language or intensity, it's the ultimate significance of what this startup represents. No different from the abomination that bariatric surgery is. Great business. Horrible for the individual. I know two people who nearly died after having it. Who am I kidding. There's money in suffering. I'll bet it will be a fantastic IPO one day. Maybe you should start marketing outside schools. Just like smoking, that's your future user base. Congratulations.

dang 5y ago

Of course obesity is an emotional topic but attacking someone personally about it is way, way beyond the pale. Breaking the HN guidelines will get you banned here, regardless of how right you are, or feel you are, about obesity and other topics. No more of this, please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

banned2321 5y ago
Dang, honestly, fuck you for censoring that post.
robomartin 5y ago
Funding a company to effectively hook people on pills by taking advantage of their vulnerability, mental state and frustration is nothing less than profane. It's one thing to turn people into ad-clicking drones, quite another to hook them on drugs when they do not need them. You might object to my lashing out. Well, sometimes it is important to take a strong stance. And, yes, sometimes those promoting magical solutions are culpable and should be scolded. Am I wrong? I do not think so. Nobody needs pills to lose weight. Nobody. That is a matter of both biology and physics. I'll defy anyone to prove otherwise. Have we become insane? The problem is that we have industrialized bad food choices and have created a marketplace where it is actually difficult to escape stuff that is bad for you. Just last night we were at a restaurant. A few tables over was a family where every single member, kids included, were twice the size of a normal and healthy person. Their table was full of all of the wrong choices. And, on top of that, large free-refill glasses of soft drinks. At the end of their meal they all had cake and ice cream. Wow. My youngest kids just started in-person high school again. The school has free food for every student. Its absolute garbage. The word "junk" doesn't even begin to cover it. The healthiest thing they have is apple juice, with nearly 40 grams of sugar per serving. My kids pack a lunch, just a simple sandwich them make themselves every morning. Not very expensive at all. Not hard to make. We don't make them, the kids do and have been doing so for years. They also drink water. We have no soft drinks at home. The kids grew up drinking water and have no cravings whatsoever for soft drinks, candy, ice cream, etc. Sure, we occasionally have the stuff at parties, but that's the exception rather than the rule. And, no, they are not deprived. They simply do not care for the stuff because they did not become addicted to any of it as they grew up. Every family relying on the State/City/County/School district to feed their kids is, in return, having their kids poisoned. Worse yet, their kids are being programmed to become addicted to food that is absolutely horrible for them. When they come out of school they are well on their way to diabetes and other problems. Pills? Please. Our kids are coming into adulthood biologically programmed for high levels of sugar and carbohydrate consumption. It's all they eat since they are done with breast feeding. No pill is going to fix that level of programming. People who reach high levels of obesity are susceptible to the kinds of things that are going to cause them to spend money popping all kinds of pills every day. They are suffering, lots of them are depressed and our government and regulatory agencies have failed them --which is part of the reason they got there. We don't need pills. The problem is systemic. Fund startups who will deal with this and not ones that are no different from any other yo-yo diet program by any other name. Does anyone really think someone is going to change life-long habits after popping pills for a year? What is far more likely to happen is that they will become dependent on said pills, which is great for a revenue stream and a billion dollar exit to a pharmaceutical giant, not so great for the individual. What is beyond the pale here isn't my choice of language or intensity, it's the ultimate significance of what this startup represents. No different from the abomination that bariatric surgery is. Great business. Horrible for the individual. I know two people who nearly died after having it. Who am I kidding. There's money in suffering. I'll bet it will be a fantastic IPO one day. Maybe you should start marketing outside schools. Just like smoking, that's your future user base. Congratulations.