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The big wake up call for me was a few years earlier. I had just hit 130Kg (285+ pounds) and I had just had enough of it all! By the time I had COVID earlier th

The big wake up call for me was a few years earlier. I had just hit 130Kg (285+ pounds) and I had just had enough of it all! By the time I had COVID earlier this year I was down to around 90Kg (198 pounds) - I get the feeling that helped out immensely compared with how I used to be. Vaccines also did their part combined with the lessening impacts of the various variants. The other thing that got brought to my attention was an off handed comment about various health issues that are impacting populations. Things like declining fertility and increasing health issues almost always correlate more with obesity rather than the environmental factors. Yes, correlation is not causation but it does seem at fairly plausible. For example could things like micro plastics be doing these things? Yes. But one would expect these to be near global - yet the impacts are felt mostly in obese nations. It could potentially be a threat multiplier however.

strken 4y ago
The rise in obesity is likely environmental. It's entirely possible that microplastics or PFAS (or whatever contaminant you want to point the finger at) causes obesity, which then causes health issues.
- Bakary 4y ago
  It's fairly obvious when you travel to places with high obesity that the problem is environmental, but microplastics aren't even going to be in the top 20 reasons for that. The food culture in those places is just completely busted. You can sense it even in layovers at US airports.
- acdha 4y ago
  It’s lifestyle: Americans lead the world in both obesity and car centric lifestyles, and we have a ton of reinforcing factors – suburbs designed around cars are unpleasant/unsafe to be active in, people eat unhealthy food because it’s cheap (cars and suburbs are both more expensive) and something they can eat in the car or pickup on the way home, kids are prevented from exercising because there are few safe places in their neighborhoods, etc. Americans who live in walkable settings are healthier on average but it’s not like they aren’t exposed to the same chemicals as their suburban counterparts.
  - nightski 4y ago
    Suburbs are very walkable. You don't always have to have a destination to walk to. My wife & I walk every night for an hour and enjoy observing our neighborhood.
    - tdeck 4y ago
      It's nice that the suburb you lived in is enjoyable to walk in, but that's not what the word "walkable" means in the context of a neighborhood. Walkable means you can accomplish daily tasks by using walking as a mode of transportation, not just a form of leisure. To address your main point, many US suburbs are not safe to walk in. Many suburbs lack things like sidewalks, crosswalks, and traffic signals for pedestrians because pedestrians are a complete afterthought. Other places have a sidewalk but no shade, or are by roads with loud high-speed traffic so they're not pleasant to walk in. I've lived in all of these kinds of places and it really affects your willingness to walk anywhere.
      - nightski 4y ago
        That's too bad. In the area around where I live I have yet to encounter a suburb that doesn't have sidewalks! I understand what you meant by "walkability". I also don't think it's fun or practical. I tend to visit a lot of different stores, not just one or two. But I only go out shopping once a week or two, not daily. That sounds exhausting. I also hate super dense living being packed in like sardines with everyone else. It's nice having a house with a decent sized yard and 10+ trees. Plenty of space and isolation, but at the same time close enough to friendly neighbors to socialize with. More Americans should give small to mid size cities a chance. They have a lot to offer. Far cheaper too, our neighborhood definitely isn't wealthy.
        acdha 4y ago
        > That's too bad. In the area around where I live I have yet to encounter a suburb that doesn't have sidewalks! It’s often linked to ugly history: when we were shopping around here in the DC area, there were tons of suburban houses with no sidewalks and transit-hostile road design which were built right after the major civil rights wins, when the thinking was that most black people couldn’t afford cars. > I understand what you meant by "walkability". I also don't think it's fun or practical. My thinking is that it’s less about fun than barriers to activity and car-centricity. If exercise is something which requires traveling elsewhere or you have to do on will-power an awful lot of people won’t do it very much, especially over time (maybe they walk the exercise trail when they first move in but lose interest over time because there’s only one route and that gets monotonous, etc.). Having kids is eye-opening that way when you’re seeing where they can go safely and under their own power, not to mention parents realizing how long they’ll be playing chauffeur. The car centric point I mentioned is related: cars are expensive ($11k/year on average in 2019) so when your household has purchased one per adult you typically end up treating them as your default mode of transportation, which over time degrades your body and conditions you to think of being outside of air conditioning as outliers, and cars are dangerous which further reduces your options. Kids are driven to parks 3 blocks away because their parents are worried they’ll get hit by a car; pedestrian routes are hot, noisy, and extra long; etc. Obviously they’re useful too but I don’t think it’s coincidence that obesity has been going up as an increasingly large fraction of people live in environments designed to be used while sitting sedentary in a machine. City living isn’t without its own problems but when you get 10k steps without even making an effort to exercise it helps.

strken 4y ago

The rise in obesity is likely environmental. It's entirely possible that microplastics or PFAS (or whatever contaminant you want to point the finger at) causes obesity, which then causes health issues.

Bakary 4y ago
It's fairly obvious when you travel to places with high obesity that the problem is environmental, but microplastics aren't even going to be in the top 20 reasons for that. The food culture in those places is just completely busted. You can sense it even in layovers at US airports.
acdha 4y ago
It’s lifestyle: Americans lead the world in both obesity and car centric lifestyles, and we have a ton of reinforcing factors – suburbs designed around cars are unpleasant/unsafe to be active in, people eat unhealthy food because it’s cheap (cars and suburbs are both more expensive) and something they can eat in the car or pickup on the way home, kids are prevented from exercising because there are few safe places in their neighborhoods, etc. Americans who live in walkable settings are healthier on average but it’s not like they aren’t exposed to the same chemicals as their suburban counterparts.
- nightski 4y ago
  Suburbs are very walkable. You don't always have to have a destination to walk to. My wife & I walk every night for an hour and enjoy observing our neighborhood.
  - tdeck 4y ago
    It's nice that the suburb you lived in is enjoyable to walk in, but that's not what the word "walkable" means in the context of a neighborhood. Walkable means you can accomplish daily tasks by using walking as a mode of transportation, not just a form of leisure. To address your main point, many US suburbs are not safe to walk in. Many suburbs lack things like sidewalks, crosswalks, and traffic signals for pedestrians because pedestrians are a complete afterthought. Other places have a sidewalk but no shade, or are by roads with loud high-speed traffic so they're not pleasant to walk in. I've lived in all of these kinds of places and it really affects your willingness to walk anywhere.
    - nightski 4y ago
      That's too bad. In the area around where I live I have yet to encounter a suburb that doesn't have sidewalks! I understand what you meant by "walkability". I also don't think it's fun or practical. I tend to visit a lot of different stores, not just one or two. But I only go out shopping once a week or two, not daily. That sounds exhausting. I also hate super dense living being packed in like sardines with everyone else. It's nice having a house with a decent sized yard and 10+ trees. Plenty of space and isolation, but at the same time close enough to friendly neighbors to socialize with. More Americans should give small to mid size cities a chance. They have a lot to offer. Far cheaper too, our neighborhood definitely isn't wealthy.
      - acdha 4y ago
        > That's too bad. In the area around where I live I have yet to encounter a suburb that doesn't have sidewalks! It’s often linked to ugly history: when we were shopping around here in the DC area, there were tons of suburban houses with no sidewalks and transit-hostile road design which were built right after the major civil rights wins, when the thinking was that most black people couldn’t afford cars. > I understand what you meant by "walkability". I also don't think it's fun or practical. My thinking is that it’s less about fun than barriers to activity and car-centricity. If exercise is something which requires traveling elsewhere or you have to do on will-power an awful lot of people won’t do it very much, especially over time (maybe they walk the exercise trail when they first move in but lose interest over time because there’s only one route and that gets monotonous, etc.). Having kids is eye-opening that way when you’re seeing where they can go safely and under their own power, not to mention parents realizing how long they’ll be playing chauffeur. The car centric point I mentioned is related: cars are expensive ($11k/year on average in 2019) so when your household has purchased one per adult you typically end up treating them as your default mode of transportation, which over time degrades your body and conditions you to think of being outside of air conditioning as outliers, and cars are dangerous which further reduces your options. Kids are driven to parks 3 blocks away because their parents are worried they’ll get hit by a car; pedestrian routes are hot, noisy, and extra long; etc. Obviously they’re useful too but I don’t think it’s coincidence that obesity has been going up as an increasingly large fraction of people live in environments designed to be used while sitting sedentary in a machine. City living isn’t without its own problems but when you get 10k steps without even making an effort to exercise it helps.