4 ms·

Calling it a "moral panic" feels almost offensively wrong to me. McDonald's is very legitimately a serious problem in America today. Obesity and related condit

by floor2 2y ago

Calling it a "moral panic" feels almost offensively wrong to me. McDonald's is very legitimately a serious problem in America today. Obesity and related conditions- Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, etc are at mind boggling epidemic levels. Americans today are living shorter, sicker lives than their parents despite tremendous improvements in medicine, working safety, automobile safety and less smoking almost entirely due to obesity related conditions. Childhood obesity is setting millions of children down a path of suffering before they're old enough to understand that they're being harmed or having the agency and autonomy to correct it. This isn't a "moral panic" over something harmless like kids playing dungeons and dragons or listening to rock and roll, this is arguably the largest health and wellbeing concern in America today. If anything, as a society we probably have too much moral panic about stigmatized things like opioids and guns that impact a pretty small percent of people and have not enough concern about the unfortunately normalized things like 3/4ths of people being overweight and 4/10 being obese.

lupusreal 2y ago
Americans have solved this by making fat into an identity which is taboo to criticize.
- rpdillon 2y ago
  You're being downvoted, but this happened to me. I mentioned at work some years back something about raising my kids and emphasizing healthy eating to maintain a healthy weight, and a co-worker took me to task for "body shaming" my children. I pointed out that I was really approaching it from the health angle, but that didn't land. Really weird experience that stuck with me.
  - lupusreal 2y ago
    People at work bug me about drinking water instead of soda. I'm overweight, BMI of 28, so to me it seems obvious why I shouldn't be drinking sugar water. But try explaining this to them, some of them are 3x my weight at least and are offended by the notion of somebody smaller than them wanting to avoid becoming like them. It's a very delicate subject, trying to explain my desire to be healthier to people who are morbidly obese and see nothing wrong with it.
monkeyfun 2y ago
I very much agree on there not being enough concern and "moral panic" about obesity, but just feel like noting that for opioids specifically though they may be affecting only a relatively small percentage of people, last year alone there was something like 70-100k dead from fentanyl overdoses. In that respect I'd argue that at least compared to guns or abortion as common political obsessions, opioids, especially high potency ones like fentanyl, are a lot closer to obesity in causing catastrophic death and suffering in the US.

by floor2 2y ago

lupusreal 2y ago

Americans have solved this by making fat into an identity which is taboo to criticize.

rpdillon 2y ago
You're being downvoted, but this happened to me. I mentioned at work some years back something about raising my kids and emphasizing healthy eating to maintain a healthy weight, and a co-worker took me to task for "body shaming" my children. I pointed out that I was really approaching it from the health angle, but that didn't land. Really weird experience that stuck with me.
- lupusreal 2y ago
  People at work bug me about drinking water instead of soda. I'm overweight, BMI of 28, so to me it seems obvious why I shouldn't be drinking sugar water. But try explaining this to them, some of them are 3x my weight at least and are offended by the notion of somebody smaller than them wanting to avoid becoming like them. It's a very delicate subject, trying to explain my desire to be healthier to people who are morbidly obese and see nothing wrong with it.

monkeyfun 2y ago

I very much agree on there not being enough concern and "moral panic" about obesity, but just feel like noting that for opioids specifically though they may be affecting only a relatively small percentage of people, last year alone there was something like 70-100k dead from fentanyl overdoses. In that respect I'd argue that at least compared to guns or abortion as common political obsessions, opioids, especially high potency ones like fentanyl, are a lot closer to obesity in causing catastrophic death and suffering in the US.