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>Surely you’ve seen a person lose weight before. Never a single one who did it sustainably and never regained weight in 5-10 years. Just because yes, metabolis
by anovikov 11mo ago
>Surely you’ve seen a person lose weight before.
Never a single one who did it sustainably and never regained weight in 5-10 years. Just because yes, metabolism stays crippled, endocrinal consequences of obesity never go away, and fat cells stay ready to be re-filled with fat at the first opportunity. Keeping weight down after losing it requires a lot more effort than staying in the same weight for someone who was never obese, and the more you lost, the bigger the difference. It's cruel and above all, unrealistic to expect a significant proportion of people who are already obese, to do it - and trying it will cause highly undesirable consequences on population level (these people will just be persistently angry for being acutely hungry for the rest of their lives - imagine what the election results will turn to be).
>Also, exercise is helpful, not for weight, but for general health.
True. At least before the "gym pill" wins marketing authorisation.
>My point isn’t that we shouldn’t have any medications for people who need it, it’s that we shouldn’t just give up and say we need to medicate an entire population, because it’s the only option.
On a population level, it absolutely is. Sure, we should encourage people to eat healthy and educate them, and try to do so ourselves, but we shouldn't expect it to work, simply because we know it won't. Masses will always go for the easiest, least-effort option, if it wasn't the case, we'd have communism - the good, "classless and stateless" one - by 1980 already as originally promised. It only didn't happen because people are not perfect. It's foolish to expect them to be and act surprised when it doesn't happen.
Simply put, diets and gym, on a population level = wishful thinking, discrimination and waste of time; GLP-1 on a population level = actual solution. And yes, in the next generation food habits improve naturally just because with much fewer people stuffing themselves with shit around (because they will be on GLP-1), it will look weird to do so, obesity will just become de-normalised and much fewer people will overeat just as much fewer people start to smoke now even if they are not at all concerned with their health or aware of consequences: when no one around smokes, you don't smoke, too.
- al_borland 11mo ago> Never a single one who did it sustainably and never regained weight in 5-10 years. I can name at least a half dozen people I know personally who have done this, and my social circle isn’t all that big. But this isn’t the route I’m arguing for. > Masses will always go for the easiest, least-effort option I agree. This is why I made the point about changing the incentives of the people who produce the food, not the people who consume it. We should setup the system so the low-effort option is still a good option. Before all this food science entered our food supply, people were thin and didn’t really know anything about nutrition. They just ate what was in front of them when they were hungry. We shouldn’t have to try hard. The current system requires hyper vigilance to be successful. That’s not what I’m pushing for. If we want the next generation to not need drugs to live, we have to do something about the food supply. The drugs aren’t going to fix the root cause of the problem that makes people need it in the first place. Let’s say you’re right about the current generation, we should still change things so the future generations have a chance.
- anovikov 11mo agoI'm sure they will have a chance and drug-based solution does that too. People on Ozempic are not attracted by junk food. Given how many obese people are out there, when Ozempic becomes cheap AND becomes mandatory for overweight people (or they lose health insurance coverage - which makes total sense, or they will look like someone who deliberately wastes insurance companies' money by harming their health on purpose), market for this trash will shrink, and obesity will be denormalised forcing people to keep their food habits in check as fat-shaming will reach epic scale. When there is a sure fix but someone isn't taking it, they will come across as irresponsible, short-term thinking beyond belief, and will surely be rejected by everyone from sex partners to employers, and justifiably so. If someone can fix their health radically and cheaply but won't do it because they just don't care, will they care about me? Will they care about my company? Sure not. It will create enough pressure both of junk food eaters, and on junk food companies (because their market opportunity will be massively squeezed), to solve the problem.