6 ms·

> there is also a genetic struggle as well. Weird that it virtually did not exist pre ww2 and that it now affects 75%+ of your population

• infecto 10mo ago
  I am not sure the genetic angle but there definitely is something happening at a craving level in the way the mind is responding. On the flip side I don’t think your comment holds much weight either. A large portion of the population worked trade jobs and the access junk food was a lot less prevalent. You kind of have a good recipe for unhealthy population now. Low quality foods and less activity.
  • lm28469 10mo ago
    I have access to the same food as everyone else, I also have craving as everyone else, but as hairless monkeys we evolved a brain able to bypass instant rewards for future goals. My step dad was obese and blamed everything and everyone but himself. We installed an app to count calories on his ipad, he lost 1/3rd of his bodyweight in less than a year and he's now cruising at an healthy weight, it really isn't rocket science People who look for excuse will always find something, it's genetics, today is a cheat day, today was a bad day, I'm not feeling good, I crave chocolate, #healthyatallsizes, &c. people who stop making excuses get out of the hole surprisingly fast
    • infecto 10mo ago
      You are blinded by your experiences. I don’t think it’s as clear as “stop making excuses”. Obviously there is a healthy portion that is probably this but I do believe there is a borderline if not full blown addiction that happens where people are not able to put it out of their thoughts. I don’t think we fully understand why but it’s becoming increasingly clear that it’s a real problem. After all there is a reason that glp1 show efficacy with other addictions. Accountability is important and I even think there is a healthy level of social shaming to be made, we should not be normalizing obesity. But I also realize that there is something at play that’s more than simply excuses.
    • nathanyz 10mo ago
      What if some people's hunger is louder than others? What if your expended willpower to not overeat is a lot less than what is required by others? I ask these as that is what the GLP-1's are showing. They change the hunger feeling and it might just be that you and others got lucky with a lower hunger feeling than others. There is no objective measure of food noise, but I think we all need to be open to the possibility that the food noise is different for different people and its not all willpower or laziness.
      • lm28469 10mo ago
        They still have a brain capable of complex thoughts and should be able to prioritise long term health over short term pleasures. Again I don't really care, I managed to help people around me following this dead simple recipe, if you want to make excuses for yourself or others go ahead and suffer. Suffering from obesity is much harder on the body and soul than "suffering" from skipping a snack or counting calories
        • infecto 10mo ago
          “Again I don’t really care”. Yet you keep coming back saying your way is the only way.
          • lm28469 10mo ago
            I'm convinced it is but you can't help people who don't want to be helped. People who want to be helped get out of the problem in a matter of months. Fix your shit, it's much better than taking pills for life to fix your obesity, which is arguably the very last link of a long chain of problems. Eat clean, exercise, understand that food is fuel, understand how the fuel is used, learn discipline, learn timing, learn to recognise good and bad fuels... pills won't do any of this, and being skinny won't bring health if you don't do/learn the things I just enumerated. Obese people need a complete lifestyle overall, not pills. No amount of pills will help if they keep everything else the same, and if they implement the changes they don't need the pills to begin with
    • staticassertion 10mo ago
      > I also have craving as everyone else, I laughed at loud at this. What an insane thing to claim. "I can experience the qualia of others, quantify it, and claim that mine is identical" lol Also it's empirically false that all people experience the same level of craving. We have studies demonstrating different dopamine responses etc.
      • lm28469 10mo ago
        The obesity rate in the US tripled in 45 years... so clearly it's not about genetics or cravings. People had the same genetics, cravings and access to calories in 1980 USA as today, we're not talking 1580 here.
        • staticassertion 10mo ago
          Your point about having the same cravings as others is exactly as stupid as it was before you made this unrelated point about obesity rates.
          • lm28469 10mo ago
            Yeah right, I'm obviously an elite genetical specimen and 75% of people are simply dumb animals with insane amount of cravings I cannot even begin to comprehend. And these people didn't exist 45 years ago. Feel free to guide me to the literature explaining these phenomenons, it seems extremely interesting, I'm especially interested in knowing how the genetics of 3/4th of the population somehow converged to this "uncontrollable cravings" pattern over two generations
            • staticassertion 10mo ago
              I'm not talking to you about obesity. I'm talking to you about the idiotic statement that you have insight into the qualia of other people. Everything else you're saying is irrelevant, I'm not trying to explain all obesity or whatever by appealing to cravings, I'm saying you're an idiot if you think you have insight into qualia.
    • 542354234235 10mo ago
      >I also have craving as everyone else This is a pretty massive assumption that your "craving level" is the same as everyone else. This takes a complex process (the feedback from the body to the brain on feelings of hunger, satiety, etc.) and pretends that it is a simple A-B thing. Just for type 1 diabetics, their insulin levels have a huge effect on feelings of hunger, with hyperphagia (feelings of insatiable hunger) being common. Diabetes is just an extreme example of the spectrum of how individual bodies regulate insulin, and insulin is just one hormone effecting and effected by food.
      • lm28469 10mo ago
        > This is a pretty massive assumption that your "craving level" is the same as everyone else. We didn't go from sub 10% obesity to 40%+ obesity in 50 years because of people cravings.
        • rootusrootus 10mo ago
          No, it was probably the incredible advances in everyday automation combined with massive increases in food availability. Survival is not nearly as physically demanding today as it was in the middle of last century.
          • brianpbeau 10mo ago
            It's also a matter of making foods more addictive to increase sales. And creating marketing to do the same thing. And then creating food deserts, etc.
        • 542354234235 10mo ago
          It's almost like the difference in the way ultra processed foods are digested, absorbed, and the way hormones are released in response has something to do with that. It's almost like this is a biological process. It's almost like the brain is an organ and if its hormones and chemicals are messed with, that can have health implications. Or maybe it just "don't be lazy".
    • array_key_first 10mo ago
      > also have craving as everyone else How could you possibly know that? You don't even know how your brain works, let alone how other people's brains work. I can drink alcohol and be perfectly fine, but a lot of people can't, because they're alcoholics. Similarly, Ive met people who have tried to smoke but couldn't pick it up, meanwhile for me it will be a lifelong, every day, struggle. The mind is complex, have some humility. You are not necessarily a beacon of purity by your own doing.
    • HDThoreaun 10mo ago
      > I also have craving as everyone else No you dont. Have some epistemic humility. People experience reality in unique ways, you can not push your experience onto anyone else with any level of confidence. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~cavitch/pdf-library/Nagel_Bat.pdf
• thefz 10mo ago
  Or that it happens overwhelmingly in specific places with a very broad genetic mix.
• mullingitover 10mo ago
  Not remotely weird: people were poorer and food was more scarce across the board pre-WWII.
  • deleted 10mo ago
    [deleted]
  • lm28469 10mo ago
    But how did people survive their craving, they must have all been completely on the verge of insanity right? Are all these lean and healthy people from archive videos actually suffering and in distress? Poor souls...
    • blell 10mo ago
      “Eating disorders didn’t exist one century ago” is indeed some take.
    • mullingitover 10mo ago
      > Are all these lean and healthy people Vast numbers of these 'lean and healthy people' were suffering from serious nutritional deficiencies. Pellagra (generally caused by eating nothing but corn) wasn't really knocked out until around WWII, for example.
• cortesoft 10mo ago
  Because genetics alone aren't enough, you also have to have opportunity. If you don't have enough food, no one is going to be fat. If you have plenty of food availability, then certain people are going to have genetics that make it more likely they end up fat.
• HDThoreaun 10mo ago
  Many people pre ww2 were perpetually hungry. Now they can afford as much food as they want
  • lm28469 10mo ago
    Obesity rate more than tripled since the 80s (1980s), people had already access to more than enough food to become obese in 1980 USA, so this alone doesn't explain much
    • rootusrootus 10mo ago
      It went up sharply in all countries. What is the common factor, if it is not the cultural moral failure you are painting it to be?
• cthalupa 10mo ago
  Genetic differences can exist and not be meaningful if the situation doesn't allow for them to be meaningfully expressed. We know that people just have different metabolisms, different levels of hunger response, different levels of "food noise," etc. We see obesity rates raising in nearly every country across the world as economic power and access to ultra-palatable hyper-calorie dense food increases. This is universal across the developed world with very few exemptions - Japan seems to largely be immune, but Korea and other portions of Asia aren't. The growth curves look very similar, despite many of these cultures across the world putting even more emphasis on discipline and responsibility than America, things that in theory directly align with being more responsible about diet. If genetics weren't involved and it was all willpower (and where does the capacity for willpower come from? Is there no genetic component to it?) we wouldn't see these growth trends be so similar to America and each other.