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This article seems to frame things in such a strange way. Maybe instead of trying to get everyone obesity medication, we can instead educate society so we all

This article seems to frame things in such a strange way. Maybe instead of trying to get everyone obesity medication, we can instead educate society so we all understand nutrition and diet and can combat the ever-persistent forces of corporations pushing unhealthy food on us?

gedy 2y ago
Look we've been educating people about this for the past 50 years at least - education doesn't work with base impulses.
cbsmith 2y ago
Yes, because what obese people lack is education.
- amatecha 2y ago
  From my subjective experience in life, what they very often lacked was parents who set the right examples around food. I know that doesn't apply to everyone of course, but I've witnessed it time and time again - an upbringing with deeply disordered routines/practices around food. It's universal among obese people in my life. I speculate that better awareness of diet/nutrition might help to prevent passing on such behaviours, like not feeding the family exclusively a bucket of KFC or McDonalds, or using food as a reward, etc. etc.. I mean, medication won't actually solve what is caused by behaviour, right? Maybe the behaviour can be reduced on a broader scale, over time, via people making better-informed decisions? If parents know their habits around food are basically ensuring their kids will struggle with obesity, maybe they'll make the effort to do something different? Dunno, it seems like a reasonable consideration.
  - cbsmith 2y ago
    > From my subjective experience in life, what they very often lacked was parents who set the right examples around food. No amount of education will change who your parents were or how you were raised. Have you observed a strong correlation between how well educated someone is vs. obesity? > I speculate that better awareness of diet/nutrition might help to prevent passing on such behaviours, like not feeding the family exclusively a bucket of KFC or McDonalds, or using food as a reward, etc. etc. I'd encourage you to talk to any reasonably intelligent obese parent to see if they need better awareness of diet/nutrition. Better still, do a survey of obese and non-obese people to compare awareness of diet/nutrition between the two groups. > I mean, medication won't actually solve what is caused by behaviour, right? Saying that obesity is caused by behaviour and therefore can't be solved with medication is a bold statement to make in the context of a story about a drug that has been clinically proven to help obese people to lose weight. Medication is often prescribed to help people who suffer from behavioural problems with positive results. I wouldn't presume medication can solve all problems caused by behaviour, but there is empirical evidence that for some problems it does help. As near as we can tell, human behaviour is regulated by a electrochemical brain & nervous system. Dumping chemicals into that system can of course change human behaviour. We see evidence of that (for better or for worse) all the time. If you have doubts and you don't even need to get a prescription, try taking a hit of acid/cocaine/alchohol and see if behaviour changes. > If parents know their habits around food are basically ensuring their kids will struggle with obesity, maybe they'll make the effort to do something different? The US has had a dramatic increase in obesity within a single generation (as in, people who were not obese for much of their lives have become morbidly obese at a rate far exceeding previous generations), let alone cross generational. While food/nutrition/health habits can certainly have a profound effect on someone's weight, there are clearly other factors at play. Consider, for a moment, the reality of an obese person living in the US today. You get negative feedback about your weight all the time. You suffer negative social outcomes, let alone all the physical ones, so few, if any, want to be obese. There is no lack of motivation to seek out information on how to avoid being obese. There's a $300+ billion industry diet/health/nutrition industry constantly seeking to inform you about products they offer to help with your diet/health/nutrition... and that's not counting the doctors that you are no doubt interacting with regularly. Of course, that's not counting all the education (solicited or otherwise) you get from friends, family, acquaintances and even random strangers. It's hard to get through a day without being "educated" about diet, nutrition and health. There's a cultural bias to think the problem is simply about behavioural/willpower/education, much the same way we look at poverty. It demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of and empathy for the plight of people who are suffering from obesity.
    - amatecha 2y ago
      I didn't say "obesity is caused by behaviour and therefore can't be solved with medication". You're arguing against a straw man. I'm suggesting the idea that maybe we as a society should better educate around our relationship with food. I believe it would make a difference - just not immediately.
      - cbsmith 2y ago
        You're right. You didn't say that. You said (and I quoted) "I mean, medication won't actually solve what is caused by behaviour, right?" in commentary to an article about a medication used to treat obesity, while discussing the need for better awareness about food/nutrition. > I'm suggesting the idea that maybe we as a society should better educate around our relationship with food. I believe it would make a difference - just not immediately. It's a bit tautological that if we did something better things would be better. Better education around our relationship with food would start with people understanding that better education about our relationship with food won't help people suffering from obesity.
        amatecha 2y ago
        Yeah, my original post is focused on the idea that "getting everyone on ozempic" isn't a long-term sustainable solution to obesity. It is a reactive, band-aid workaround that will never tackle the underlying causes. It will help someone survive and live a better life, but the moment they stop taking ozempic they are back at square one, haven't gained the wherewithal/discipline to fight the constant urges to eat, and will be right back where they started. I mean, unless this is some miracle drug that has residual/lasting effects? In light of that, and barring the many other ways one can combat obesity themselves, it would probably be beneficial if everyone, in general, knew all about the pitfalls of disordered eating and knew more about how to combat that trap, and knew why that actually matters for themselves and the people they care about. I've observed people enable each others' obesity over and over. I've observed people reinforce horrible habits and be unsupportive of others' efforts to combat those habits. People don't know shit about diet and food and spread their ignorant, lazy attitudes and behaviour to those around them. Why make a real meal when you can just order $50 of takeout to feed the whole party? Then, if you don't eat "enough", everyone is on your case because "you must be starving" and "why are you eating so little?", because they are totally uneducated about the possible challenges people face when it comes to food. The more people know about this stuff, the more it benefits everyone. I still think this also circles back to the "passing it to your kids" thing, because it's now a multi-generational problem.
lostmsu 2y ago
Educating people will hardly work. Bans on junk foods at government level might.
- eniwnenahg 2y ago
  In EU they banned the sale of oral tobacco (snus), which is safer than smoking tobacco. Snus once had cancer labeling but that was generally considered not-very-true and labeling was removed. Tobacco smoke causes cancer. Drug bans also built many overfilled prisons and likely contributed to the invention and spread of harmful drugs such as crystal meth and fentanyl. This is a one sided view of course. I like William Blakes work, "Auguries of Innocence".
- amatecha 2y ago
  If educating people didn't work, we'd all be drinking cocaine soda and burning leaded fuel. I mean, there's a reason things have generally greatly improved over time for most of humanity. We know more things and act upon that knowledge. This applies to basically every single thing humans do. Maybe one day we won't be drinking sugar water and adulterating ~every piece of food on the shelf with high-fructose corn syrup?
  - cthalupa 2y ago
    > If educating people didn't work, we'd all be drinking cocaine soda and burning leaded fuel. When the person you are arguing with is saying that government induced bans would probably help more, and your are arguing they're wrong and your two examples were resolved by government induced bans, you're going about arguing in a very strange way.
ndsipa_pomu 2y ago
Unfortunately companies make more profit by pushing unhealthy food onto consumers which can be evidenced by the money they spend advertising it. They're exploiting our instincts to seek out high calorie foods which was an advantage when humans didn't have a ready supply of food available at all times, but nowadays leads to a whole host of illnesses.
filoleg 2y ago
Why either/or? Maybe we should try educate society on dangers of using heroin. I agree that it is a good thing, and we should continue educating people about its dangers. But clearly that alone didn’t solve the problem, and I think it would be a good idea to utilize alternative options as well (in addition to continuing the education of society on its dangers).
dghlsakjg 2y ago
Do you think overweight people don't know why they're overweight? There are plenty of obese people that understand nutrition just fine, there are obese people who understand it well enough to have lost significant weight and gained it all back. Clearly there is something else going on that we haven't grasped yet.
- amatecha 2y ago
  Education may involve "finding a strategy that works for you". There are so, so many different ways to combat disordered eating. These are learnable things. My thought around "better education" is that the cycle of disordered eating can be stopped at some point before parents pass it on to their kids, at least (as I just posted in adjacent comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41811916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41811916 ). I absolutely recognize how insanely difficult it is to come back from disordered eating and stay at a lower weight after finally reaching it. Though, now that you ask, I do think that many people don't actually know why they are overweight. They say it's because "McDonald's is cheaper than buying good food", not realizing the McDonalds won't satiate them and they will eat/spend more because their body is starved for proper nutrition. Watch the series "Supersize vs. Superskinny" and observe how nearly every participant is utterly clueless as to the underlying causes of their challenges on either size of the disordered-eating scale.
- 2snakes 2y ago
  Psychology of hunger behaviors.
- slothtrop 2y ago
  Understanding nutrition, and eating habits in practice, are two very different things. Regaining weight is the primary issue really. Most people are capable of losing weight, but gain it back, and it gets harder going forward. Metabolic adaptation is better understood now and among the factors (.e.g increasing caloric intake too quickly after weight loss), but falling into old habits that are culturally ubiquitous is a glaring part of the problem. Former drug addicts are told now to sever contact with peers who partook in those indulgences as they're likely to pull them back in. With food, it can be more than a minor subculture. There are regions of the US that have much higher obesity rates than others. Not having family members and a romantic partner on board can be difficult.
triceratops 2y ago
If we could do that through education, then we'd have made it illegal for corporations to push unhealthy food.

gedy 2y ago

Look we've been educating people about this for the past 50 years at least - education doesn't work with base impulses.

cbsmith 2y ago

Yes, because what obese people lack is education.

amatecha 2y ago
From my subjective experience in life, what they very often lacked was parents who set the right examples around food. I know that doesn't apply to everyone of course, but I've witnessed it time and time again - an upbringing with deeply disordered routines/practices around food. It's universal among obese people in my life. I speculate that better awareness of diet/nutrition might help to prevent passing on such behaviours, like not feeding the family exclusively a bucket of KFC or McDonalds, or using food as a reward, etc. etc.. I mean, medication won't actually solve what is caused by behaviour, right? Maybe the behaviour can be reduced on a broader scale, over time, via people making better-informed decisions? If parents know their habits around food are basically ensuring their kids will struggle with obesity, maybe they'll make the effort to do something different? Dunno, it seems like a reasonable consideration.
- cbsmith 2y ago
  > From my subjective experience in life, what they very often lacked was parents who set the right examples around food. No amount of education will change who your parents were or how you were raised. Have you observed a strong correlation between how well educated someone is vs. obesity? > I speculate that better awareness of diet/nutrition might help to prevent passing on such behaviours, like not feeding the family exclusively a bucket of KFC or McDonalds, or using food as a reward, etc. etc. I'd encourage you to talk to any reasonably intelligent obese parent to see if they need better awareness of diet/nutrition. Better still, do a survey of obese and non-obese people to compare awareness of diet/nutrition between the two groups. > I mean, medication won't actually solve what is caused by behaviour, right? Saying that obesity is caused by behaviour and therefore can't be solved with medication is a bold statement to make in the context of a story about a drug that has been clinically proven to help obese people to lose weight. Medication is often prescribed to help people who suffer from behavioural problems with positive results. I wouldn't presume medication can solve all problems caused by behaviour, but there is empirical evidence that for some problems it does help. As near as we can tell, human behaviour is regulated by a electrochemical brain & nervous system. Dumping chemicals into that system can of course change human behaviour. We see evidence of that (for better or for worse) all the time. If you have doubts and you don't even need to get a prescription, try taking a hit of acid/cocaine/alchohol and see if behaviour changes. > If parents know their habits around food are basically ensuring their kids will struggle with obesity, maybe they'll make the effort to do something different? The US has had a dramatic increase in obesity within a single generation (as in, people who were not obese for much of their lives have become morbidly obese at a rate far exceeding previous generations), let alone cross generational. While food/nutrition/health habits can certainly have a profound effect on someone's weight, there are clearly other factors at play. Consider, for a moment, the reality of an obese person living in the US today. You get negative feedback about your weight all the time. You suffer negative social outcomes, let alone all the physical ones, so few, if any, want to be obese. There is no lack of motivation to seek out information on how to avoid being obese. There's a $300+ billion industry diet/health/nutrition industry constantly seeking to inform you about products they offer to help with your diet/health/nutrition... and that's not counting the doctors that you are no doubt interacting with regularly. Of course, that's not counting all the education (solicited or otherwise) you get from friends, family, acquaintances and even random strangers. It's hard to get through a day without being "educated" about diet, nutrition and health. There's a cultural bias to think the problem is simply about behavioural/willpower/education, much the same way we look at poverty. It demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of and empathy for the plight of people who are suffering from obesity.
  - amatecha 2y ago
    I didn't say "obesity is caused by behaviour and therefore can't be solved with medication". You're arguing against a straw man. I'm suggesting the idea that maybe we as a society should better educate around our relationship with food. I believe it would make a difference - just not immediately.
    - cbsmith 2y ago
      You're right. You didn't say that. You said (and I quoted) "I mean, medication won't actually solve what is caused by behaviour, right?" in commentary to an article about a medication used to treat obesity, while discussing the need for better awareness about food/nutrition. > I'm suggesting the idea that maybe we as a society should better educate around our relationship with food. I believe it would make a difference - just not immediately. It's a bit tautological that if we did something better things would be better. Better education around our relationship with food would start with people understanding that better education about our relationship with food won't help people suffering from obesity.
      - amatecha 2y ago
        Yeah, my original post is focused on the idea that "getting everyone on ozempic" isn't a long-term sustainable solution to obesity. It is a reactive, band-aid workaround that will never tackle the underlying causes. It will help someone survive and live a better life, but the moment they stop taking ozempic they are back at square one, haven't gained the wherewithal/discipline to fight the constant urges to eat, and will be right back where they started. I mean, unless this is some miracle drug that has residual/lasting effects? In light of that, and barring the many other ways one can combat obesity themselves, it would probably be beneficial if everyone, in general, knew all about the pitfalls of disordered eating and knew more about how to combat that trap, and knew why that actually matters for themselves and the people they care about. I've observed people enable each others' obesity over and over. I've observed people reinforce horrible habits and be unsupportive of others' efforts to combat those habits. People don't know shit about diet and food and spread their ignorant, lazy attitudes and behaviour to those around them. Why make a real meal when you can just order $50 of takeout to feed the whole party? Then, if you don't eat "enough", everyone is on your case because "you must be starving" and "why are you eating so little?", because they are totally uneducated about the possible challenges people face when it comes to food. The more people know about this stuff, the more it benefits everyone. I still think this also circles back to the "passing it to your kids" thing, because it's now a multi-generational problem.

lostmsu 2y ago

Educating people will hardly work. Bans on junk foods at government level might.

eniwnenahg 2y ago
In EU they banned the sale of oral tobacco (snus), which is safer than smoking tobacco. Snus once had cancer labeling but that was generally considered not-very-true and labeling was removed. Tobacco smoke causes cancer. Drug bans also built many overfilled prisons and likely contributed to the invention and spread of harmful drugs such as crystal meth and fentanyl. This is a one sided view of course. I like William Blakes work, "Auguries of Innocence".
amatecha 2y ago
If educating people didn't work, we'd all be drinking cocaine soda and burning leaded fuel. I mean, there's a reason things have generally greatly improved over time for most of humanity. We know more things and act upon that knowledge. This applies to basically every single thing humans do. Maybe one day we won't be drinking sugar water and adulterating ~every piece of food on the shelf with high-fructose corn syrup?
- cthalupa 2y ago
  > If educating people didn't work, we'd all be drinking cocaine soda and burning leaded fuel. When the person you are arguing with is saying that government induced bans would probably help more, and your are arguing they're wrong and your two examples were resolved by government induced bans, you're going about arguing in a very strange way.

ndsipa_pomu 2y ago

Unfortunately companies make more profit by pushing unhealthy food onto consumers which can be evidenced by the money they spend advertising it. They're exploiting our instincts to seek out high calorie foods which was an advantage when humans didn't have a ready supply of food available at all times, but nowadays leads to a whole host of illnesses.

filoleg 2y ago

Why either/or? Maybe we should try educate society on dangers of using heroin. I agree that it is a good thing, and we should continue educating people about its dangers. But clearly that alone didn’t solve the problem, and I think it would be a good idea to utilize alternative options as well (in addition to continuing the education of society on its dangers).

dghlsakjg 2y ago

Do you think overweight people don't know why they're overweight? There are plenty of obese people that understand nutrition just fine, there are obese people who understand it well enough to have lost significant weight and gained it all back. Clearly there is something else going on that we haven't grasped yet.

amatecha 2y ago
Education may involve "finding a strategy that works for you". There are so, so many different ways to combat disordered eating. These are learnable things. My thought around "better education" is that the cycle of disordered eating can be stopped at some point before parents pass it on to their kids, at least (as I just posted in adjacent comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41811916 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41811916 ). I absolutely recognize how insanely difficult it is to come back from disordered eating and stay at a lower weight after finally reaching it. Though, now that you ask, I do think that many people don't actually know why they are overweight. They say it's because "McDonald's is cheaper than buying good food", not realizing the McDonalds won't satiate them and they will eat/spend more because their body is starved for proper nutrition. Watch the series "Supersize vs. Superskinny" and observe how nearly every participant is utterly clueless as to the underlying causes of their challenges on either size of the disordered-eating scale.
2snakes 2y ago
Psychology of hunger behaviors.
slothtrop 2y ago
Understanding nutrition, and eating habits in practice, are two very different things. Regaining weight is the primary issue really. Most people are capable of losing weight, but gain it back, and it gets harder going forward. Metabolic adaptation is better understood now and among the factors (.e.g increasing caloric intake too quickly after weight loss), but falling into old habits that are culturally ubiquitous is a glaring part of the problem. Former drug addicts are told now to sever contact with peers who partook in those indulgences as they're likely to pull them back in. With food, it can be more than a minor subculture. There are regions of the US that have much higher obesity rates than others. Not having family members and a romantic partner on board can be difficult.

triceratops 2y ago

If we could do that through education, then we'd have made it illegal for corporations to push unhealthy food.