5 ms·

Any answer that begins with "if everyone just-" is tantamount to doing nothing and those are the other options available, nothing except for weight loss drugs h

Any answer that begins with "if everyone just-" is tantamount to doing nothing and those are the other options available, nothing except for weight loss drugs has managed to put a dent in widespread obesity.

shdjcnckcicnx 1y ago
[flagged]
- keybored 1y ago
  Are you ready to throw stones in glass houses? We can list a thousand sins of people with actual political power that dwarf the sin of “accommodating” so-called lifestyle choices. Then we can talk about how those same people abuse trust at every opportunity. Your buzzwords are useless.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago
  > It’s more a spiritual / moral decline of culture in the west It's not just the West. "Obesity in India has reached epidemic proportions in the 21st century, with morbid obesity affecting 5% of the country's population" [1]. (It's about 7% in America [2].) Meanwhile in China, "the incidence of overweight and obesity among school-age children...was 15.5% in 2010, rising to 24.2% in 2019 and soaring to 29.4% in 2022" [2]. Same story in Vietnam: "The prevalence of overweight among children aged under 5 years increased from 5.6% in 2010 to 7.4% in 2019. For overweight and obesity among children aged 5 to 19 years, prevalence rose from 8.5% and 2.5% in 2010 to 19% and 8.1% in 2020, respectively" [3]. OP is right. "If everyone just..." is shorthand for wishing upon a star that the world were different. It's not a serious solution for reality as it is. (To the degree there is a social trust variable at play, it's in folks doing mental gymnastics to reject the clinical data.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_India [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10357130/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10357130/ [3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9947684/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9947684/
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- maketheman 1y ago
  It has nothing to do with spirituality or morals. Skinny-country person moves to the US, they get fatter (statistically speaking). They weren't skinny at home because they were better spiritual warriors or whatever, but because they didn't live in the US. The options are to fix what are probably a whole bunch of problems across multiple domains at a cost of $(enormous sum) with a project spanning many decades (and which may easily be derailed and set back years and years at any time), so that living in the US doesn't make people gain weight, or... drugs, that work today. From a policy perspective, those are the only options. There's no good reason to think that reversing "moral decline" or whatever will help, since that doesn't seem to be why some other countries are skinnier.
  - gosub100 1y ago
    Just to enumerate a few of the sides of this problem: - economics. Junk food is more available because processed foods last longer and can be stored at mini marts and gas stations. It is true that beans and rice are cheaper than junk food, but junk food is a very cheap way for a dopamine hit. - time: people have less time to cook due to working and commuting - urban planning: walkable neighborhoods are few in the US. Lots of daily exercise is foregone for this simple reason. - culture: the US has a very pleasure-seeking culture. Given the choice of having healthy food vs gratifying food, we tend to the latter. All of these factors conspire to get us where we are.
- slibhb 1y ago
  > It’s more a spiritual / moral decline of culture in the west. It's not a question of decline. There's no reason to think that humans today have less self control than in the past. We're dealing with obesity now because tasty, cheap food didn't exist until the second half of the 20th century.
  - BuckRogers 1y ago
    It’s not actually that tasty though. Maybe it was 40 or 50 years ago. But now most of it is flavorless. It just commonly available. And it’s not even cheap anymore. For the most part.
    - philipkglass 1y ago
      If you don't find it tasty, you probably don't have a problem with overeating it. But many people can finish half a bag of Doritos in one binge. I'm one of those people. They're delicious and don't satiate me fast enough to moderate consumption. That's why I don't buy Doritos in the first place. If they're around, I'll eat them.
      - maketheman 1y ago
        [dead]
      - BuckRogers 1y ago
        I just swear that soda pop and junk food tasted better in the 80s. Doritos are actually still pretty solid. But it seems like everything that’s using high fructose corn syrup simply does not taste like the stuff did when they were using cane sugar for everything. I also think they got the food scientists going far deeper than that, and there were changes to the recipes that just continually drove pennies out of the product. But it’s no longer the product that it was back in 1970 or 1980. One example that always comes to mind for me is Sun Drop. He used to be able to see the bits of fruit floating around in one of those bottles. I don’t think Mountain Dew taste good anymore either it has changed.
  - s1artibartfast 1y ago
- inglor_cz 1y ago
  "yet those same people are unable to put less food in their mouths" And you think that addiction is a moral/spiritual problem? Nope, it is an endocrinological problem. And precisely drugs like Ozempic have made it very clear, because it doesn't just treat obesity, but many other addictive behaviors like compulsive shopping or gambling. By "merely" altering hormonal balance in the target organism. People once thought that smallpox was divine punishment for sins. It is 2025, we are on Hacker News, and yet the very same pattern of thinking emerges here, against all the scientific knowledge.
  - BuckRogers 1y ago
    We do know that some punishments were the result of sin. We have scriptural evidence. It’s also possible that smallpox was. The mechanism in which that things occur could very well be naturalistic, of course. These areas of examination are mutually exclusive.
  - sdeframond 1y ago
    > And you think that addiction is a moral/spiritual problem? Nope, it is an endocrinological problem. Interesting point. Addiction needs a drug. Drug needs dealers. Thankfully, dealing drugs is forbidden. Selling unhealthy and bordeline addictive "food" is défini legal though. Should we regulate this more?
    - dragonwriter 1y ago
      > Addiction needs a drug. Drug needs dealers. > Thankfully, dealing drugs is forbidden. This is an example of equivocation: Insofar as there is a definition of "drug" for which "Thankfully, dealing drugs is forbidden" is (well, minus the subjective judgement "thankfully") categorically true, it is not one for which either "Addiction needs a drug" or "Drug needs dealers" is also categorically true.
    - inglor_cz 1y ago
      Given the "successes" of various prohibitions and wars on drugs all around the world, I don't think this is going to work, at least not with major unintended consequences (hello sugar-smuggling gangs with machetes!). People are really good at trafficking banned substances. Treating addiction as a disease would probably be less violent and less likely to produce major human rights violations. There is a middle road of simply taxing highly processed foodstuff more without banning it outright, but that also creates perverse incentives for governments which now have a source of income that they don't want to jeopardize.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  Sure, our obesity epidemic is because everybody just suddenly decided to start eating more a few decades ago. Much more likely there is some environmental factor causing it. I guess calling it moral decay feels more self-righteous though.

shdjcnckcicnx 1y ago

[flagged]

keybored 1y ago
Are you ready to throw stones in glass houses? We can list a thousand sins of people with actual political power that dwarf the sin of “accommodating” so-called lifestyle choices. Then we can talk about how those same people abuse trust at every opportunity. Your buzzwords are useless.
JumpCrisscross 1y ago
> It’s more a spiritual / moral decline of culture in the west It's not just the West. "Obesity in India has reached epidemic proportions in the 21st century, with morbid obesity affecting 5% of the country's population" [1]. (It's about 7% in America [2].) Meanwhile in China, "the incidence of overweight and obesity among school-age children...was 15.5% in 2010, rising to 24.2% in 2019 and soaring to 29.4% in 2022" [2]. Same story in Vietnam: "The prevalence of overweight among children aged under 5 years increased from 5.6% in 2010 to 7.4% in 2019. For overweight and obesity among children aged 5 to 19 years, prevalence rose from 8.5% and 2.5% in 2010 to 19% and 8.1% in 2020, respectively" [3]. OP is right. "If everyone just..." is shorthand for wishing upon a star that the world were different. It's not a serious solution for reality as it is. (To the degree there is a social trust variable at play, it's in folks doing mental gymnastics to reject the clinical data.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_India https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_India [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10357130/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10357130/ [3] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9947684/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9947684/
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
maketheman 1y ago
It has nothing to do with spirituality or morals. Skinny-country person moves to the US, they get fatter (statistically speaking). They weren't skinny at home because they were better spiritual warriors or whatever, but because they didn't live in the US. The options are to fix what are probably a whole bunch of problems across multiple domains at a cost of $(enormous sum) with a project spanning many decades (and which may easily be derailed and set back years and years at any time), so that living in the US doesn't make people gain weight, or... drugs, that work today. From a policy perspective, those are the only options. There's no good reason to think that reversing "moral decline" or whatever will help, since that doesn't seem to be why some other countries are skinnier.
- gosub100 1y ago
  Just to enumerate a few of the sides of this problem: - economics. Junk food is more available because processed foods last longer and can be stored at mini marts and gas stations. It is true that beans and rice are cheaper than junk food, but junk food is a very cheap way for a dopamine hit. - time: people have less time to cook due to working and commuting - urban planning: walkable neighborhoods are few in the US. Lots of daily exercise is foregone for this simple reason. - culture: the US has a very pleasure-seeking culture. Given the choice of having healthy food vs gratifying food, we tend to the latter. All of these factors conspire to get us where we are.
slibhb 1y ago
> It’s more a spiritual / moral decline of culture in the west. It's not a question of decline. There's no reason to think that humans today have less self control than in the past. We're dealing with obesity now because tasty, cheap food didn't exist until the second half of the 20th century.
- BuckRogers 1y ago
  It’s not actually that tasty though. Maybe it was 40 or 50 years ago. But now most of it is flavorless. It just commonly available. And it’s not even cheap anymore. For the most part.
  - philipkglass 1y ago
    If you don't find it tasty, you probably don't have a problem with overeating it. But many people can finish half a bag of Doritos in one binge. I'm one of those people. They're delicious and don't satiate me fast enough to moderate consumption. That's why I don't buy Doritos in the first place. If they're around, I'll eat them.
    - maketheman 1y ago
      [dead]
    - BuckRogers 1y ago
      I just swear that soda pop and junk food tasted better in the 80s. Doritos are actually still pretty solid. But it seems like everything that’s using high fructose corn syrup simply does not taste like the stuff did when they were using cane sugar for everything. I also think they got the food scientists going far deeper than that, and there were changes to the recipes that just continually drove pennies out of the product. But it’s no longer the product that it was back in 1970 or 1980. One example that always comes to mind for me is Sun Drop. He used to be able to see the bits of fruit floating around in one of those bottles. I don’t think Mountain Dew taste good anymore either it has changed.
- s1artibartfast 1y ago
inglor_cz 1y ago
"yet those same people are unable to put less food in their mouths" And you think that addiction is a moral/spiritual problem? Nope, it is an endocrinological problem. And precisely drugs like Ozempic have made it very clear, because it doesn't just treat obesity, but many other addictive behaviors like compulsive shopping or gambling. By "merely" altering hormonal balance in the target organism. People once thought that smallpox was divine punishment for sins. It is 2025, we are on Hacker News, and yet the very same pattern of thinking emerges here, against all the scientific knowledge.
- BuckRogers 1y ago
  We do know that some punishments were the result of sin. We have scriptural evidence. It’s also possible that smallpox was. The mechanism in which that things occur could very well be naturalistic, of course. These areas of examination are mutually exclusive.
- sdeframond 1y ago
  > And you think that addiction is a moral/spiritual problem? Nope, it is an endocrinological problem. Interesting point. Addiction needs a drug. Drug needs dealers. Thankfully, dealing drugs is forbidden. Selling unhealthy and bordeline addictive "food" is défini legal though. Should we regulate this more?
  - dragonwriter 1y ago
    > Addiction needs a drug. Drug needs dealers. > Thankfully, dealing drugs is forbidden. This is an example of equivocation: Insofar as there is a definition of "drug" for which "Thankfully, dealing drugs is forbidden" is (well, minus the subjective judgement "thankfully") categorically true, it is not one for which either "Addiction needs a drug" or "Drug needs dealers" is also categorically true.
  - inglor_cz 1y ago
    Given the "successes" of various prohibitions and wars on drugs all around the world, I don't think this is going to work, at least not with major unintended consequences (hello sugar-smuggling gangs with machetes!). People are really good at trafficking banned substances. Treating addiction as a disease would probably be less violent and less likely to produce major human rights violations. There is a middle road of simply taxing highly processed foodstuff more without banning it outright, but that also creates perverse incentives for governments which now have a source of income that they don't want to jeopardize.
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
Sure, our obesity epidemic is because everybody just suddenly decided to start eating more a few decades ago. Much more likely there is some environmental factor causing it. I guess calling it moral decay feels more self-righteous though.