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The main ingredient towards any body transformation, whether it's losing, maintaining, or putting on weight, is to eat the correct amount, yes. Exercising, and
by throwaway22032 3y ago
The main ingredient towards any body transformation, whether it's losing, maintaining, or putting on weight, is to eat the correct amount, yes.
Exercising, and eating adult meals, can help, but they're way lower on the list than simply eating the correct amount.
But you know this. I know that you know this. You just want some sort of collectivist answer that doesn't exist.
It's harder to e.g. make eggs for breakfast, or cook a roast dinner, than it is to just go and have a donut from the drive through.
There is obviously no way to "solve" that on a population level. You may as well ask "how do we get people to stop using social media and read books". They have to do it themselves. Many people will say they want to, but they really don't. Many just don't care at all.
Case in point, here I am on HN rather than doing something more healthy. These are my revealed preferences. Who cares?
- constantcrying 3y agoThe amount of obese people has been consistently on the rise for many decades. Before the 60s it almost did not exist. Clearly there is a solution, since it used to not be a problem. "People eat more now" is just a tautology. Why do they do it though? Food was worse in the 60s?
- throwaway22032 3y agoI think we're at loggerheads here, this is more of a political debate I feel. There's probably more affordable fast food about. Lately there seems to be a movement towards enabling obesity via lack of shame. If those things changed there would probably be movement. But whilst that might be interesting to an academic, that doesn't change what a person needs to do as an individual. You're not going to lose weight by complaining about the lack of healthy restaurants around you.
- constantcrying 3y agoYes, of course this is political, it simply can not be if obesity is effecting large parts of the population. >But whilst that might be interesting to an academic, I think it should be important to politicians. If the literal health of their populaion is not a priority, then what is? >You're not going to lose weight by complaining about the lack of healthy restaurants around you. Absolutely. But I am not talking about "me", since it is a population wide problem, population wide solutions are the only solutions.
- throwaway22032 3y agoI think politicians have a duty to act on things that individuals actually cannot change, over things that they quite easily can, that seems like a waste of energy to me. That's what I mean by political. It's not a problem to me that someone else prefers food over health, it doesn't affect me at all. Drug addicts in the street affect me, that's something that I'd call a "population wide problem" since there's nothing I can personally do about it.
- sn9 3y agoThere was an explosion of processed foods that are less satiating while also being engineered to be hyper-palatable after WWII. The solution you're looking for would require legislating a ban on any food products that didn't exist before the mid-twentieth century. You may find that this would be politically unpopular.
- constantcrying 3y ago>The solution you're looking for would require legislating a ban on any food products that didn't exist before the mid-twentieth century. Why? You can have food that is more satiating and less palatable without banning all food from before the 60s, you even claim it has been engineered for the opposite effect. In fact that does not seem like a high ask of the food industry.
- sn9 3y agoProfit motive. Industries don't sacrifice profits for the public good. Just look at the fossil fuel and tobacco industries. That's one of the primary reasons we have governments. To solve issues like this.