According to some sources, at least 1 in 8 of the world population is classified as ‘obese’. Since nobody in any government seems to have thought up a working solution, what do you believe can be done to solve the epidemic?
This will be unpopular, but: just stop caring. Let people be whatever size, treat them equally, and don’t sweat it. You may not like that but one way to solve an issue is to realize there is no issue.
Would people be healthier if they weren’t obese? Possibly. The evidence is a little mixed. I’m in the Middle where I think not being obese is healthier but the effect is overblown by related factors. People would be healthier if no one drank alcohol but I don’t think banning alcohol is worth it.
(Revealing my biases: I’ve been extremely fit, I’ve also been technically obese, and I’m on a GLP-1 inhibitor because I want to lose weight. But I’m not interested in telling other people how heavy they should be)
Bring on the downvotes, my body so ready.
Get rid of BMI.
I stopped eating animal products and lost 50 lbs, so that’s a start
Then meat being made largely unaffordable by the inflation crisis ought to bend the curve.
Treating it like the multifaceted issue it is instead of a moral failing would be a start.
In the US that would mean labor laws which favor the human instead of the business. With hours that allow more daily personal time and pay that allows prosperity even at minimum wages. These things would tale care of most people.
It would also mean medical treatment being available without burdensome cost, and with consideration to it being a mental hurdle like addiction and destigmatizing seeking aid for it in that manner. Universal healthcare removing the need/demand for private and employment tied insurance would help this as well.
There are many more facets, and facets within facets to all of this, but from a mile high view I think this would help a lot.
Teach children how to eat. In school. Countries that do this have much lower obesity rates.
I don’t think there is a solid answer but the current political chaos points to one step
- make junk and fast food more expensive - vice taxes
Looking at myself, I see portion size is the number one issue. Mental state also contribute, although I can’t claim anything treatable. So I eat too much and it’s a comfort thing but I don’t see a way for government to help me do the right thing there
Exercise. While exercise isn’t the main contributor to being overweight, it does go to state of mind. I’m much less likely to overeat when I’ve been active. This is where we ought to be able to do something to keep people moving
Make people even poorer, so that they can transform from too poor to buy healthy food to too poor to buy food
The upcoming food shortages should take care of it.
The collapse of industrialized society will solve it very quickly.
You absolutely can get addicted to food, others turn to food for comfort, some eat as a response to trauma as well (ever see my 600lb life, almost every person there has had some sort of trauma or mental health struggle.), therapy and other mental health care never seems to make it into these plans and that, in my opinion, is where they fail.
Most governments never seem to treat obesity as a chronic illness, just some sort of personal failing.
Edit.
Obesity risk factors are also genetic, no one chooses to be obese and the constant shaming and hatred people who exist in fat bodies get is unreal. I know fat people who are terrified of being seen even going for a walk outside because of internalised fat shaming, it fucks with your head something fierce.
I grew up fat which did not set me up for good habits later in life, I have struggled with binge eating and stress eating all throughout my life, getting an ADHD diagnosis and medicated for it was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me, others in my situation may not have the ability to get that help or be in a place they are ready to even seek it.
Why is it the government’s job to solve the obesity epidemic?
The government is supposed to work for the people. I think it is clear that noone wants to be obese. So you have a significant % of the population that wants help. That makes it the governments job to try and help. Of course that isn’t how government functions at all.
We pay the government for it to deliver social goods.
One of those goods is health.
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Cheap access to fresh fruit and veg
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Education for healthy eating starting in childhood
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Public outdoor spaces that are enjoyable to exercise in
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Cheap, frequent public transit to allow everyone to access food and public spaces
If those don’t take care of most of it we can keep going from there.
Cheap access to fresh fruit and veg
Won’t work. In my hospital cafeteria at lunch, med staff is lined up at the salad bar, patients line up at the deep fryer. People get a plate of fries and pour gravy over it and call that a meal.
Why does your hospital have a deep fryer to begin with? I’m sure if they set out a pile of low cost cocaine they’d consume that as well, it’s silly to offer people addictive foods and then turn your nose up at them when they eat them; especially in the context of being in the middle of what is probably one of the most stressful events of their lives and likely wanting familiar comfort food.
Anyway, the only difference between you/your colleagues and your patients is covered by my second point: education.
Why does your hospital have a deep fryer to begin with?
Because the cafeteria needs to stay open and patients demand it. If we didn’t have shit to feed idiots, idiots would order shit in. You cannot force people to eat well.
If you’re just reading the first sentence of everything I type I don’t see a reason to continue
A thing most people don’t get is that knowledge of how to prepare food and the time to actually do it are also key. My parents could cook 3 meals between them and poorly at that. I didn’t know anything about how to use a knife including the most basic things like sharp knives being less dangerous than blunt ones. I have learned later in life and I am fairly accomplished in the kitchen, including making a roux, making passata from scratch, fermenting and pickling vegetables, making yoghurt, making adaptable stir fry dishes, making stews and soups, and all manner of other things like breads and pâté. None of those things were taught to me by my parents or through schooling. All the access in the world wouldn’t make me able to use chicken liver without making it chalky and nasty, or cook a steak without ruining it.
It’s a very good suggestion, but do you think any government right now would push for that? Not disagreeing with you, just wondering about the feasibility of such ideas?
Those are two separate questions, without a strong public push for those things it’s unlikely governments will do it of their own accord unless they’re specifically trying to cut healthcare costs. But there are places with the things listed; you can’t go anywhere in Central America without running into a fruit cart, cities with good public transit exist, and places with public spaces that encourage exercise exist, programs to educate the public about healthy eating exist. Each thing is individually accomplishable.
Nah. There’s not really any significant benefit to making such changes from a government perspective.
Nah, can do stuff like the UK did - taxing sugar - so that instead of getting less income from removing sales tax, it’d be more income from new tax
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Sugar is in every processed food, even savory foods where it’s balanced out with other spices, because sugar is addictive. They can’t put cocaine in food anymore, so they add the next best thing.
I eat nearly zero-carb. I’ve been ketogenic for about six years now. I know exactly what I eat because I make all of my own meals, and none of it is processed food. No, it’s not more expensive, because eating this way eliminates cravings and you eat far less but better quality. It looks more expensive on paper only because you don’t realize you’re going to eat half as much food if you eat this way.
One good rule is no more than two ingredients listed on the package. So, for instance, natural peanut butter includes only peanuts and salt, but the other stuff adds homogenized oil and sugar. They take out the peanut oil and sell it separately for a high price. I don’t eat peanut butter, but it’s a good example of the rule everyone is familiar with.
We’ve invented the cure to obesity. We should be dancing in the streets and throwing parades for scientists. Again. We invented the cure to obesity. It’s just a distribution problem at this point. We just need to work on getting the drugs out to everyone that wants them at a price anyone can afford. Do that, and the obesity crisis is solved.
It turns out that when you give humans calorie abundance, it just breaks a lot of our “full meters.” And we can fix that with a simple shot or pill. Generations fretting and brow-beating people over morality and gluttony. Generations of forcing people to painfully starve themselves to achieve a healthy weight. Generations of shame, guilt, and cruelty. But all along, the real issue wasn’t moral. It was medical. Or perhaps, historical.
The reality is that many of us just have a part of our biology that isn’t calibrated for the modern world. We have satiation systems that are designed for ages of famine. It’s only in the last few centuries that food has become cheap and abundant, and it’s still not that way everywhere. You take a satiation system that is evolved for an age of famine, but require it to live in an age of abundance? Obesity is the inevitable result. Sure, you can always starve yourself into a healthy weight. But the point is human beings aren’t evolved to have to maintain their weight through painful conscious self-denial. We’re supposed to simply eat when we’re hungry and stop when we’re full. That’s how human beings have lived for most of history and pre-history. And until the era of modern cheap calories? Our ancestors never really had to worry about eating themselves to obesity. There was only so much honey you could get a hold of, and it required taking quite a few bee stings to get it. Maybe the Lord in his castle had to worry about obesity, but this is a burden our ancestors never had at scale. We guilt ourselves for failure to maintain healthy weights, when that’s just not something humans should have to consciously do.
But we need not accept endless calorie counting and weight maintenance through intentional starvation. We also don’t need to return to an age of deprivation. We CAN have our cake and eat it to. We don’t need to accept obesity or starvation. We can build a world where calories are cheap and abundant, but people can simply modify their satiation systems to achieve whatever body weight they want without conscious effort. Find a way to get these drugs to everyone. That is how you solve the obesity crisis. Some may not want to take them or have medical reasons they can’t. But it doesn’t matter. Imagine lamenting if we only cut the obesity rate by 80%. Simply giving these drugs out free to as many people as want them will inevitably be the most effective form of obesity intervention a government could ever do. Forget public health campaigns and presidential fitness tests. Just get people the damn medicine they need.
We invented a miracle. Let’s share the wonder.
The drug stops people from getting fat, but that doesn’t mean they’re suddenly healthy.
Here’s what’s going to happen with that. They’ll take the drug and not exercise and still end up dying early. Because, keeping the fat off is, at best, only half a solution.
Also, the long term effects of the drug aren’t known, they can’t be, it hasn’t been around long enough to know.
Be different animals or require life to be more physically demanding. The problem isn’t food, it’s just how we are, literally any other animal in an ecological setting like humans would have the same problem. There is no requirement in the modern world that requires humans to not be fat.
It’s not healthy, but to survive in human society physical fitness is 100% not a requirement. This is just us now.
Yeah. We make it to reproduction age and get our kids raised. We can do that while fat and unhealthy.
The only motivations are social demands to be thin, and not dying early. We’re working to eliminate the first one, and the second one is too far in the future for people who are somewhat fat now to worry about.
Capitalism doesn’t care if the 50+ year-old people die, because they’re mostly “used up” by then.
