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> 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 con
by 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 agoIt’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 agoIf 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 agoI 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 agoI think there is a long list of reasons to think it is lower. Self control is a skill which requires practice. A huge amount of our time and practice is devoted to chasing immediate gratification. Doom scrolling, tv, ect. This is all practicing the opposite.
- jf22 1y agoOther countries with access to phones and TVs but not mass produced foods stay leaner.
- s1artibartfast 1y agolots of other differences I imagine
- roywiggins 1y agoThe thing we seem to be learning especially now with GLP-1 drugs is that a lot of skinny people are not skinny because they have iron self control, but because they don't need it, because their bodies aren't constantly sending them screaming chemical signals to eat. These drugs turn those signals down and suddenly people stop wanting to eat so much. So another hypothesis that seems totally in keeping with the data is that either 1) some group of people have always had this problem in history, they just haven't had access to food like we do now, and/or 2) something about modernity is pushing those chemical triggers up to overdrive in more people. Self-control really sucks as a solution to anything. When was the last societal problem solved by a national campaign of personal self-control?
- s1artibartfast 1y agoIm not saying there isnt a biological component. I think a large portion of the USA has a trashed metabolic and hormonal system. A lot of this damage is irreversible from overconsumption. unless we start dosing children with GLP-1s preventatively for weight and medicate them for attention we should probably think about how we relate to our environmental conditions long term and prevent patterns from repeating. There are lots of people out there not living their best lives