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We don't know why everyone suddenly decided to eat a lot more calories starting around 1980. It's not even clear that people are eating more calories than in 18

by zerohp 4y ago

We don't know why everyone suddenly decided to eat a lot more calories starting around 1980. It's not even clear that people are eating more calories than in 1880. Food was abundant in the US for most people long before that.

numpad0 4y ago
We also don’t do cost/benefit analysis of life expectancy and productivity. It’s a horrible thought, but there could be positive financial effects in so-called obesity.
- roywiggins 4y ago
  An effect like that has been found with smoking: "due to a shorter lifespan of 8.6 years, smokers’ mean total healthcare costs during the entire study period were actually €4700 lower than for non-smokers. For the same reason, each smoker missed 7.3 years (€126 850) of pension. Overall, smokers’ average net contribution to the public finance balance was €133 800 greater per individual compared with non-smokers." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3533014/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3533014/
  - numpad0 4y ago
    Smoking at least had only downsides, we don’t know if obesity and sources of obesity has positive performance impacts, like X kg of weight correlating to Y dollars more per hour, of course after normalized by roles.
Wyoming23 4y ago
It seems like we do know all the reasons though? It's multiple factors, but they're all mostly easy to observe, measure and identify. High-sugar, high-fat, packaged foods with preservatives, emulsifiers and artificial colors became cheap, abundant and normalized. These are essentially the perfect cocktail for obesity (by perfectly mixing calories, insulin response, gut microbiome changes, satiety, dopaminergic effects, etc). Simultaneously fewer Americans are working physical jobs, the jobs that are physical have reduced physicality and society in general has shifted to more car-centric and sedentary leisure (watching TV instead of going fishing on Saturday). Finally social changes. Women's liberation movement means more dual income households (and single adult households) which means less cooking from scratch and more fast food, packages food, etc. Also strong anti-bullying, body-positivity and self-esteem cultural norms prevent people from getting any peer feedback about their health/weight until it's a doctor telling them that they have diabetes and high blood pressure.

by zerohp 4y ago

numpad0 4y ago

We also don’t do cost/benefit analysis of life expectancy and productivity. It’s a horrible thought, but there could be positive financial effects in so-called obesity.

roywiggins 4y ago
An effect like that has been found with smoking: "due to a shorter lifespan of 8.6 years, smokers’ mean total healthcare costs during the entire study period were actually €4700 lower than for non-smokers. For the same reason, each smoker missed 7.3 years (€126 850) of pension. Overall, smokers’ average net contribution to the public finance balance was €133 800 greater per individual compared with non-smokers." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3533014/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3533014/
- numpad0 4y ago
  Smoking at least had only downsides, we don’t know if obesity and sources of obesity has positive performance impacts, like X kg of weight correlating to Y dollars more per hour, of course after normalized by roles.

Wyoming23 4y ago

It seems like we do know all the reasons though? It's multiple factors, but they're all mostly easy to observe, measure and identify. High-sugar, high-fat, packaged foods with preservatives, emulsifiers and artificial colors became cheap, abundant and normalized. These are essentially the perfect cocktail for obesity (by perfectly mixing calories, insulin response, gut microbiome changes, satiety, dopaminergic effects, etc). Simultaneously fewer Americans are working physical jobs, the jobs that are physical have reduced physicality and society in general has shifted to more car-centric and sedentary leisure (watching TV instead of going fishing on Saturday). Finally social changes. Women's liberation movement means more dual income households (and single adult households) which means less cooking from scratch and more fast food, packages food, etc. Also strong anti-bullying, body-positivity and self-esteem cultural norms prevent people from getting any peer feedback about their health/weight until it's a doctor telling them that they have diabetes and high blood pressure.