6 ms·

More relevant questions: - Why don't we stop subsidizing corn so much? - Why don't we teach effective nutrition and cooking in school? - Why don't we teach e

by spodek 13y ago

More relevant questions: - Why don't we stop subsidizing corn so much? - Why don't we teach effective nutrition and cooking in school? - Why don't we teach effective exercise, sports, and fitness in schools? - If we can ban alcohol and tobacco sales to children, why not things like added sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, etc? - If we can ban alcohol and tobacco advertising to children, why not products with added sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, etc? - Why don't we limit advertising on fast and junk "food"? - Why don't we provide healthy lunches to school children instead of using them to subsidize agricultural conglomerates for low quality food? - Why don't we stop subsidizing fossil fuels so much so people would walk and ride bikes more? - Why don't we align our medical system with prevention instead of expensive and risky cures? You can come up with plenty more questions that would mostly obviate the need to wonder about obesity and wonder drugs to cure it. The overwhelming majority of people would benefit from changes in diet and exercise requiring no chemicals needing FDA approval. Fresh fruits and vegetables seasoned with fresh herbs and spices taste better than anything, at least to me, and it's hard to eat too much of them. Few feelings feel better than the exhaustion of even moderate exercise. EDIT: reduced cynicism based on eli's welcome comment.

eli 13y ago
Not sure why you are so cynical. It seems like there's pretty clear progressive movement on several issues. I never thought I'd see a black president in my lifetime.
- thefuzz 13y ago
  I don't see him as being cynical. I think these are questions worth asking given that the OP is asking why diet pills aren't prescribed. It's looking at a problem in a systemic way rather than isolated events, at least according to me.
  - awjr 13y ago
    Allowing the prescription of diet pills treats the symptom and not the cause. Anecdotally I've been overweight most of my life and it is only through a change in lifestyle (cycling to work and a shift to low carb diet i.e. low sugar) that I have seen significant weight loss. That's not to say prescription diet pills wouldn't work, but without underlying lifestyle changes I would expect the person to using the pills to be going on and off them for the rest of their life.
    - jrs235 13y ago
      "it is only through a change in lifestyle" And that's the difficult thing people aren't willing to do. Taking a pill might help for the near term (we are so short sighted these days!) but it won't address the long term. "I've been taking this pill so now I'm not overweight [so now] I don't need to take the stairs over the elevator!" A few years later, you might not be overweight but you still aren't healthy! "it is only through a change in lifestyle" Reminds me of a coworker that complains about his financial situation. He complains about not making enough money and thinking that if he made more then he'd be able to "pay his bills and get ahead"... that might work for the short term, but without a change in how he handles money he's going to end up as "poor" as he is now. (Preface: He makes more than the average American, this isn't about true poverty) If you live paycheck to paycheck because you are unwilling to make the difficult change in your lifestyle by living slightly under your income level in an effort to pay off debt and save for the future, you will continue to live paycheck to paycheck after you get a raise (that you claim is what you need to "get ahead"). If you spend what you make, you'll just spend more when you make more. Discipline. It's not easy.
tekacs 13y ago
Mostly obviate my foot. The number of issues that would need addressing to make it possible for everyone to eat a healthy diet (hell how do we go about making cheap, convenient, healthy food on such a scale?) vastly exceeds the number involved in coming up with post-hoc remedies. More relevant questions are surely those which enable us to do something about the problem in the foreseeable future (such as diet pills) rather than pondering about how things could be better if we were able to solve dozens of complex issues over an unrealistically short timespan?
- numbsafari 13y ago
  "how do we go about making cheap, convenient, healthy food on such a scale?" We need people to stop worrying about "casual gaming at scale" and start worrying about "living a good life at scale". It's just that, there's not usually as much profit in the solutions that actually work or matter.
  - maccard 13y ago
    > We need people to stop worrying about "casual gaming at scale" and start worrying about "living a good life at scale". I'm a healthy male in my 20's, I eat well and exercise regularly. I'd be PISSED if everyone stopped working on games and tried to solve all the eating problems of my friends because they're too lazy to do it themselves, instead of catering to what people who already try to live healthily want to do.
- utnick 13y ago
  Don't we already have cheap convenient healthy food? I mostly eat tacos for dinner, beans, occasionaly rice, random vegetables, a little bit of hot sauce, sometimes eggs. Its cheaper than mcdonalds and takes about 5 minutes to make.
JulianMorrison 13y ago
There are two major things missing from your list. First: the lipostat mechanism needs fixing, because evolution built what worked, not what would be ideal. Exposure to overeating should not result in a life sentence of obesity. Second: replace capitalism. There is a reason why there are food deserts, why people have to make the choice of nutrition versus quantity, why people aren't educated on nutrition, why people don't have the time or emotional energy to work at food after they've done working at work, and it's capitalism. Or more precisely, any money-and-work economy. Capitalism just makes it run wildly out of control.
- theorique 13y ago
  The NY Daily News demonstrated that the "food desert" concept is mostly a myth. https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/food-desert-myth-article-1.1065165 https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/food-desert-myth-article... edit: Also NY Times, if that is a more authoritative source for some. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of-food-deserts-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of...
Varcht 13y ago
Why don't we live on soylent hooked up to our computers in nice safe plastic bubbles?
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
tocomment 13y ago
I've been looking for a way to make vegetables like brocoli or green beans palatable. What's your secret?
- jamespo 13y ago
  he / she covers them in cheese
- jchrisa 13y ago
  If you cut out junk food they'll taste better. Don't over cook.
- ghaff 13y ago
  Roasting helps add flavor. (Maillard reaction.) So do spices/herbs.Don't overcook. (Also butter, of course, but I assume the goal here is to keep it healthy.)
- nkoren 13y ago
  Two suggestions, slightly contradictory, but either will work: 1.) Spices. there are loads of really interesting, amazing spices out there, but even a simple sautée of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and black pepper can make almost any vegetable taste amazing. 2.) Stop eating over-flavoured foods. Doritos etc. have a ridiculous amount of flavouring; if you eat foods like this consistently then you'll desensitise your palette to the subtler but still absolutely lovely tastes of vegetables, in the same way that staring into a spotlight makes it difficult to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of twilight. You can't re-sensitise your palette by simply cutting down on hyperflavoured food; you need to eliminate it almost completely. After a while, you'll discover that brocoli and green beans are wonderful, and Doritos are absolutely brutal on the tongue.
  - visakanv 13y ago
    This is great advice, and worked for me beautifully since I stopped smoking and started eating at home with my wife. +1
- mhb 13y ago
at-fates-hands 13y ago
It's as much about the unhealthy lifestyles which are promoted as it is about the "internet" society we live in. People simply want something right now. They don't want to go to the gym and do the hard work and lose those 10lbs over say six to eight months. They want to take a pill so they can lose 10-20lbs over two months. It's like anything in life. You have to put in the hard work to get the results you want. I feel like giving people a pill is taking the easy way out.
- JamesArgo 13y ago
  One should avoid falling into the trap of thoughtlessly shunning quick, easy solutions.
- seiji 13y ago
  10lbs over say six to eight months. That's a long time. Go keto and drop 5 pounds a week.
- dpark 13y ago
  >They don't want to go to the gym and do the hard work and lose those 10lbs over say six to eight months. I wouldn't want to do that, either. That's miserably slow. A pound per week (which is a fairly slow weight loss, equivalent to a roughly 500 Calorie/day deficit) loses you about 24 pounds in 6 months. Two pounds per week is still well within the healthy range and gets you nearly 50 pounds lost in 6 months.
3pt14159 13y ago
Obviously preventative measures should be our first resort. Obviously all farm subsidize (or at least those that are not in alignment with a healthy population) should be ended. But I take issue with banning sugary, hydrogenated things. The problem with the modern diet isn't that a kid drinks a Coca Cola with his McDonald's fries once a month when he goes out for a treat with his mom after swim practice. The problem is that the poor lack both the skills, the time, and the money to prepare healthy and tasty food. I made homemade beef chutney last night. Mango, two different types of onions, red peppers, other peppers, etc. It was delicious. Cost about $4 or $5 per person just in food, not counting my Wustof knives or $200 non-teflon non-stick pan. Kraft dinner would have taken 1/10th the time, at 1/5th the cost, with absolutely no knowledge or skill. If we want the poor to eat healthier we need to show them options that are cheap, easy, and fast. Tuna fish on Rye with an orange. That type of thing.
- marrs 13y ago
  I hear this kind of argument all the time and I don't buy it at all. How do poor people have less time to cook than well off people? We all work the same hours. Pasta costs next to nothing, as does rice, as do beans. Veg and dairy are a bit more but still cheap by any standards. Cigarettes and alcohol, on the other hand, are expensive. As is running a car, or going to McDonalds. So maybe try subsidising your meals by smoking less, or drinking less, or eating out less, or walking more.
  - Killah911 13y ago
    Perhaps they should just eat cake... "We all work the same hours" I'm sure you work 2-3 jobs at minimum wage to keep things going and rent paid. The dollar menu at McDonalds looks a lot more attractive than cooking when you've barely got money for food or the time to prepare it. Eating well is relatively Expensive. Sure you can cut out the car and carbs and obviously all poor people have their liquor and smoke money set aside... Or maybe poverty is a bit more complex than your overly simplistic and a bit dickish analysis... Just let them eat cake (Preferably gluten free)...
  - herge 13y ago
normloman 13y ago
"Why don't we stop subsidizing corn so much?" Lobbyists. "Why don't we teach effective nutrition and cooking in school?" We do. It's called home economics. "Why don't we teach effective exercise, sports, and fitness in schools?" We do. It's called gym. "If we can ban alcohol and tobacco sales to children, why not things like added sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, etc?" Go tell a 6 year old they can't have cake on their birthday. "If we can ban alcohol and tobacco advertising to children, why not products with added sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, etc?" Lobbyists "Why don't we limit advertising on fast and junk "food"?" Lobbyists "Why don't we provide healthy lunches to school children instead of using them to subsidize agricultural conglomerates for low quality food?" We kinda do: http://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/national-school-lunch-program http://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/national-school-lunch-program "Why don't we stop subsidizing fossil fuels so much so people would walk and ride bikes more?" How many times do I have to say this: LOBBYISTS. "Why don't we align our medical system with prevention instead of expensive and risky cures?" That's a good question, actually. EDIT: I like falcolas' answer: Money. Long term care is more profitable than prevention.
- johnward 13y ago
  As far as nutrition goes what the government thinks is a nutritious lunch is far from it. It's way to pro carb/starch/sugar and anti fat. A typical lunch when I was in High School would be a decent sized slice of pizza, piece of bread, a scoop of corn, a sugary milk. All of those are carb sources.
  - normloman 13y ago
    The guidelines have changed. The school lunch program is putting more emphasis on fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. That said, it's still not perfect, and not every school participates, hence "we kinda do."
    - johnward 13y ago
      I know they are getting better. My school in WV participated. When inspectors came in they shut down the school store that sold chips, rice crispy treats, pop. Also a lady in the basement sold giant grease soaked pepperoni roles except when the inspectors came. All of the other soft drink machines were turned off on those days too. My wife's High School in Ohio had an ice cream sundae bar...
quertaciousness 13y ago
Most of the measures you suggest seem to be centred around teaching children, conditioning children and banning things from children. However, I think we need to think more about why people overeat, and then address that problem directly. It's closely related to why they smoke, why they gamble, why they take drugs, even why they swear. It's not just a health issue. Trying to coerce people into being 'virtuous' often has the opposite effect to that intended: one of the reasons why teens smoke and swear is seemingly because they know that authority figures don't like them to, for instance. Trying to live up to the expectations of other people is tiring and stressful; people look for ways to relieve that stress -- guess what they choose.
randomdata 13y ago
> Why don't we stop subsidizing corn so much? Because corn has at least some value, and letting the land lay fallow would cost the tax payer even more (though that is sometimes subsidized too) in order to maintain the stabilization? Or are you suggesting that farms don't need the stabilization program at all? As a farmer who farms in a country without subsidies, I would agree with that, but I understand the reasons why Americans value the program when you look at it from a threat of war point of view.
loceng 13y ago
When you're addicted to sugar, fresh fruit and vegetables won't taste as good - so it's a catch 22 - people will have to go through a shift, however I think it would help for them to hear or know that is what's going on.

by spodek 13y ago

eli 13y ago

Not sure why you are so cynical. It seems like there's pretty clear progressive movement on several issues. I never thought I'd see a black president in my lifetime.

thefuzz 13y ago
I don't see him as being cynical. I think these are questions worth asking given that the OP is asking why diet pills aren't prescribed. It's looking at a problem in a systemic way rather than isolated events, at least according to me.
- awjr 13y ago
  Allowing the prescription of diet pills treats the symptom and not the cause. Anecdotally I've been overweight most of my life and it is only through a change in lifestyle (cycling to work and a shift to low carb diet i.e. low sugar) that I have seen significant weight loss. That's not to say prescription diet pills wouldn't work, but without underlying lifestyle changes I would expect the person to using the pills to be going on and off them for the rest of their life.
  - jrs235 13y ago
    "it is only through a change in lifestyle" And that's the difficult thing people aren't willing to do. Taking a pill might help for the near term (we are so short sighted these days!) but it won't address the long term. "I've been taking this pill so now I'm not overweight [so now] I don't need to take the stairs over the elevator!" A few years later, you might not be overweight but you still aren't healthy! "it is only through a change in lifestyle" Reminds me of a coworker that complains about his financial situation. He complains about not making enough money and thinking that if he made more then he'd be able to "pay his bills and get ahead"... that might work for the short term, but without a change in how he handles money he's going to end up as "poor" as he is now. (Preface: He makes more than the average American, this isn't about true poverty) If you live paycheck to paycheck because you are unwilling to make the difficult change in your lifestyle by living slightly under your income level in an effort to pay off debt and save for the future, you will continue to live paycheck to paycheck after you get a raise (that you claim is what you need to "get ahead"). If you spend what you make, you'll just spend more when you make more. Discipline. It's not easy.

tekacs 13y ago

Mostly obviate my foot. The number of issues that would need addressing to make it possible for everyone to eat a healthy diet (hell how do we go about making cheap, convenient, healthy food on such a scale?) vastly exceeds the number involved in coming up with post-hoc remedies. More relevant questions are surely those which enable us to do something about the problem in the foreseeable future (such as diet pills) rather than pondering about how things could be better if we were able to solve dozens of complex issues over an unrealistically short timespan?

numbsafari 13y ago
"how do we go about making cheap, convenient, healthy food on such a scale?" We need people to stop worrying about "casual gaming at scale" and start worrying about "living a good life at scale". It's just that, there's not usually as much profit in the solutions that actually work or matter.
- maccard 13y ago
  > We need people to stop worrying about "casual gaming at scale" and start worrying about "living a good life at scale". I'm a healthy male in my 20's, I eat well and exercise regularly. I'd be PISSED if everyone stopped working on games and tried to solve all the eating problems of my friends because they're too lazy to do it themselves, instead of catering to what people who already try to live healthily want to do.
utnick 13y ago
Don't we already have cheap convenient healthy food? I mostly eat tacos for dinner, beans, occasionaly rice, random vegetables, a little bit of hot sauce, sometimes eggs. Its cheaper than mcdonalds and takes about 5 minutes to make.

JulianMorrison 13y ago

There are two major things missing from your list. First: the lipostat mechanism needs fixing, because evolution built what worked, not what would be ideal. Exposure to overeating should not result in a life sentence of obesity. Second: replace capitalism. There is a reason why there are food deserts, why people have to make the choice of nutrition versus quantity, why people aren't educated on nutrition, why people don't have the time or emotional energy to work at food after they've done working at work, and it's capitalism. Or more precisely, any money-and-work economy. Capitalism just makes it run wildly out of control.

theorique 13y ago
The NY Daily News demonstrated that the "food desert" concept is mostly a myth. https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/food-desert-myth-article-1.1065165 https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/food-desert-myth-article... edit: Also NY Times, if that is a more authoritative source for some. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of-food-deserts-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of...

Varcht 13y ago

Why don't we live on soylent hooked up to our computers in nice safe plastic bubbles?

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

tocomment 13y ago

I've been looking for a way to make vegetables like brocoli or green beans palatable. What's your secret?

jamespo 13y ago
he / she covers them in cheese
jchrisa 13y ago
If you cut out junk food they'll taste better. Don't over cook.
ghaff 13y ago
Roasting helps add flavor. (Maillard reaction.) So do spices/herbs.Don't overcook. (Also butter, of course, but I assume the goal here is to keep it healthy.)
nkoren 13y ago
Two suggestions, slightly contradictory, but either will work: 1.) Spices. there are loads of really interesting, amazing spices out there, but even a simple sautée of olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and black pepper can make almost any vegetable taste amazing. 2.) Stop eating over-flavoured foods. Doritos etc. have a ridiculous amount of flavouring; if you eat foods like this consistently then you'll desensitise your palette to the subtler but still absolutely lovely tastes of vegetables, in the same way that staring into a spotlight makes it difficult to appreciate the aesthetic qualities of twilight. You can't re-sensitise your palette by simply cutting down on hyperflavoured food; you need to eliminate it almost completely. After a while, you'll discover that brocoli and green beans are wonderful, and Doritos are absolutely brutal on the tongue.
- visakanv 13y ago
  This is great advice, and worked for me beautifully since I stopped smoking and started eating at home with my wife. +1
mhb 13y ago

at-fates-hands 13y ago

It's as much about the unhealthy lifestyles which are promoted as it is about the "internet" society we live in. People simply want something right now. They don't want to go to the gym and do the hard work and lose those 10lbs over say six to eight months. They want to take a pill so they can lose 10-20lbs over two months. It's like anything in life. You have to put in the hard work to get the results you want. I feel like giving people a pill is taking the easy way out.

JamesArgo 13y ago
One should avoid falling into the trap of thoughtlessly shunning quick, easy solutions.
seiji 13y ago
10lbs over say six to eight months. That's a long time. Go keto and drop 5 pounds a week.
dpark 13y ago
>They don't want to go to the gym and do the hard work and lose those 10lbs over say six to eight months. I wouldn't want to do that, either. That's miserably slow. A pound per week (which is a fairly slow weight loss, equivalent to a roughly 500 Calorie/day deficit) loses you about 24 pounds in 6 months. Two pounds per week is still well within the healthy range and gets you nearly 50 pounds lost in 6 months.

3pt14159 13y ago

Obviously preventative measures should be our first resort. Obviously all farm subsidize (or at least those that are not in alignment with a healthy population) should be ended. But I take issue with banning sugary, hydrogenated things. The problem with the modern diet isn't that a kid drinks a Coca Cola with his McDonald's fries once a month when he goes out for a treat with his mom after swim practice. The problem is that the poor lack both the skills, the time, and the money to prepare healthy and tasty food. I made homemade beef chutney last night. Mango, two different types of onions, red peppers, other peppers, etc. It was delicious. Cost about $4 or $5 per person just in food, not counting my Wustof knives or $200 non-teflon non-stick pan. Kraft dinner would have taken 1/10th the time, at 1/5th the cost, with absolutely no knowledge or skill. If we want the poor to eat healthier we need to show them options that are cheap, easy, and fast. Tuna fish on Rye with an orange. That type of thing.

marrs 13y ago
I hear this kind of argument all the time and I don't buy it at all. How do poor people have less time to cook than well off people? We all work the same hours. Pasta costs next to nothing, as does rice, as do beans. Veg and dairy are a bit more but still cheap by any standards. Cigarettes and alcohol, on the other hand, are expensive. As is running a car, or going to McDonalds. So maybe try subsidising your meals by smoking less, or drinking less, or eating out less, or walking more.
- Killah911 13y ago
  Perhaps they should just eat cake... "We all work the same hours" I'm sure you work 2-3 jobs at minimum wage to keep things going and rent paid. The dollar menu at McDonalds looks a lot more attractive than cooking when you've barely got money for food or the time to prepare it. Eating well is relatively Expensive. Sure you can cut out the car and carbs and obviously all poor people have their liquor and smoke money set aside... Or maybe poverty is a bit more complex than your overly simplistic and a bit dickish analysis... Just let them eat cake (Preferably gluten free)...
- herge 13y ago

normloman 13y ago

"Why don't we stop subsidizing corn so much?" Lobbyists. "Why don't we teach effective nutrition and cooking in school?" We do. It's called home economics. "Why don't we teach effective exercise, sports, and fitness in schools?" We do. It's called gym. "If we can ban alcohol and tobacco sales to children, why not things like added sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, etc?" Go tell a 6 year old they can't have cake on their birthday. "If we can ban alcohol and tobacco advertising to children, why not products with added sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, etc?" Lobbyists "Why don't we limit advertising on fast and junk "food"?" Lobbyists "Why don't we provide healthy lunches to school children instead of using them to subsidize agricultural conglomerates for low quality food?" We kinda do: http://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/national-school-lunch-program http://www.fns.usda.gov/nslp/national-school-lunch-program "Why don't we stop subsidizing fossil fuels so much so people would walk and ride bikes more?" How many times do I have to say this: LOBBYISTS. "Why don't we align our medical system with prevention instead of expensive and risky cures?" That's a good question, actually. EDIT: I like falcolas' answer: Money. Long term care is more profitable than prevention.

johnward 13y ago
As far as nutrition goes what the government thinks is a nutritious lunch is far from it. It's way to pro carb/starch/sugar and anti fat. A typical lunch when I was in High School would be a decent sized slice of pizza, piece of bread, a scoop of corn, a sugary milk. All of those are carb sources.
- normloman 13y ago
  The guidelines have changed. The school lunch program is putting more emphasis on fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. That said, it's still not perfect, and not every school participates, hence "we kinda do."
  - johnward 13y ago
    I know they are getting better. My school in WV participated. When inspectors came in they shut down the school store that sold chips, rice crispy treats, pop. Also a lady in the basement sold giant grease soaked pepperoni roles except when the inspectors came. All of the other soft drink machines were turned off on those days too. My wife's High School in Ohio had an ice cream sundae bar...

quertaciousness 13y ago

Most of the measures you suggest seem to be centred around teaching children, conditioning children and banning things from children. However, I think we need to think more about why people overeat, and then address that problem directly. It's closely related to why they smoke, why they gamble, why they take drugs, even why they swear. It's not just a health issue. Trying to coerce people into being 'virtuous' often has the opposite effect to that intended: one of the reasons why teens smoke and swear is seemingly because they know that authority figures don't like them to, for instance. Trying to live up to the expectations of other people is tiring and stressful; people look for ways to relieve that stress -- guess what they choose.

randomdata 13y ago

> Why don't we stop subsidizing corn so much? Because corn has at least some value, and letting the land lay fallow would cost the tax payer even more (though that is sometimes subsidized too) in order to maintain the stabilization? Or are you suggesting that farms don't need the stabilization program at all? As a farmer who farms in a country without subsidies, I would agree with that, but I understand the reasons why Americans value the program when you look at it from a threat of war point of view.

loceng 13y ago

When you're addicted to sugar, fresh fruit and vegetables won't taste as good - so it's a catch 22 - people will have to go through a shift, however I think it would help for them to hear or know that is what's going on.