What do you think needs to be done to combat the obesity epidemic?

[HexMachina]

3 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

I'm intrigued by the idea of shaming Cheesecake Factory for serving the 2730 kcal breakfast burrito. Can company shaming be part of the solution? 

In Sweden there's currently lots of debate about "flight shame", where people feel guilty about flying to their vacation destinations due to its climate footprint. A blogger has been tagging celebrities' vacation pictures on Instagram with comments like "Thailand: 3 tons of CO2". Maybe something similar is possible for restaurants and supermarkets?

"90% of what Supermarket X sells is junk food. Shame!"

"No item on Hamburger Chain Y's menu contains less than 900 kcal. Shame!"

"Theatre chain Z serves soda in 64 oz cups. Shame!"

I'm not entirely sure we can just blame the food companies because they are, after all, just trying to make money in a competitive environment. If people want giant size servings, they must provide it or lose business to someone who does. (This is also part of the reason I favour legislation - if the same rules apply to everyone, then no one will be forced to choose between profit and ethics.)

So the food companies aren't completely to blame for the obesity epidemic. But if we want legislation, for example a soda tax, it seems to me that "the evil multinational companies are killing our children with unhealthy products" is an easier sell than "the government needs to regulate how food can be sold because we can't be trusted to choose right by ourselves". If we want any change on this, we need to build a movement calling for this kind of action, because it certainly doesn't seem like an election winning issue right now.

Not sure how effective shaming the company would be. In my experience a lot of these restaurants almost take pride in stuff like this, using it to bring in customers. The “Man v Food” phenomenon if you like

[Kalbear]

2 hours ago, Ormond said:

I know I'm a picky academic -- I agree with 90% of what you say, but the idea that rural Americans have "very little places they can walk safely" seems absurd on the face of it. I understand the longer commute times and lower access to parks and other facilities specifically created for exercise or recreation. But when there isn't really bad weather, people who live in rural areas should have plenty of places they can walk for exercise safely. 

I've seen it as an argument for not closing things like malls - because the weather is basically bad enough to make it too hard. This is especially true for senior citizens. Though a lot of the places I've seen people live in rural areas have no sidewalks and people live on 45mph roads. 

There are solutions, and workarounds, but it isn't such an easy thing for everyone. 

[lokisnow]

On 3/3/2019 at 7:40 AM, baxus said:

Also, comparison you make between obese people and smokers is invalid. Obese people's equivalent to "just quit smoking" is that they start eating healthy 100% of the time and exercise at rather high levels of intensity as well as losing all the weight overnight. That's unrealistic and everyone knows it.

Smoking is actually a wonderful point of comparison for a whole lot of reasons. kal has mentioned many,

But today another came up for me, at the gym this morning, the trainer was extolling the virtues of cheat days to his victims, "hamburgers, pizza, beer, desserts, it's actually good for you to have them occasionally," 

and I thought, "yeah, but no one tells a smoker, "You can still have a cheat day every week."

No one talks to people trying to quit smoking about the virtues of occasionally smoking, extolling how good it is to feel the cigarette in your hand, the satisfaction and anticipation of a lighter igniting, to finally take that glorious drag, to feel your entire body respond in pure glory. 

For some odd reason, no one talks to smokers like that, but those treating the obese make counterproductive rhetoric of this kind a standard piece in their arsenal of failed treatment regimes.

On 3/3/2019 at 8:07 AM, Erik of Hazelfield said:

the underlying causes of the obesity epidemic boil down to the same thing: that in today's society being unhealthy is easy while being healthy is hard. 

I categorically and completely reject this moral judgment. From my perspective, most non-obese people in my peer groups are extremely lazy, but they all believe themselves to be virtuous because they share the same  moral judgment you propose here.

It is actually extremely easy to be non obese, if you are so lucky as to be immune. such people have maintained their non obese homestasis their entire lives without putting any sustained effort to that maintenance*.  But they continually tell themselves how good they are for achieving such a hard state (while putting in no effort to a achieve their state). 

These words, easy and hard, and the accompanying moral weights attached to them are rather toxic and unhelpful.

16 hours ago, baxus said:

Once again. No, it is not ineffective. It is EXTREMELY effective.

It fails 97% of the time, all the time, all over the world, that is EXTREMELY ineffective. Difficulty has nothing to do with it, most obese people have dedicated significant portions of their lives to fighting the disease with the treatment you're proposing since they were teenagers--and when they continually fail, year in, year out, over and over again, persisting continually sometimes for decades to absolutely no change in their condition, people like you then smugly tell them if they only would have tried harder or longer they could have "Stuck to it" "Sticking to it is hard!"

 

Quote

There is absolutely NO WAY that a person who eats reasonably healthy and exercises three times a week for an hour will not get healthier than they were before starting to do that. I do understand that there is difficulty in achieving such a goal, I have seen it in some of my close friends and family who can't do it or just plain won't do it.

Let me break out YOUR math.

there are 168 hours in the week.

3 hours is 1.8% of a week.

Most exercise does not burn more than 500 calories per hour

That is 1500 calories a week

You're saying 1500 calories a week of exercise is a cure for obesity.

And the immediate cause of the exercise is the inducement of an incredibly powerful non-conscious demand by the body's tissues for replenished calories. the stress of continually resisting these demand elevates cortisol levels which slows calorie burn.

The energy burned from exercise is glycogen, which is (simplifying) sugar in the muscles reserved for sudden energy needs, you're not burning fat when you exercise, no matter what you do. 

Exercise for the health benefits of being in shape and staving off long term disease states, don't exercise to lose weight

***

there's 168 hours in a week

your typical obese manual laborer works 60 hours a week

60 hours is 35.7% of the week.

She burns about 400 calories more per hour doing manual labor than a typical "virtuous" non obese white collar 'worker' (who enjoys complaining about how lazy obese laborers like her are).

that's a surplus calorie burn of 24,000 calories a week over our "virtuous" non obese white collar worker (who spends 60 hours a week watching netflix)

She's still obese.

You're claiming that the key for her to be non-obese is to go from spending 35.7% of her time on significant physical labor to 37.5% of her time on it, and that the extra 3 hours of exercise and 1500 calories will cure her obesity.

That's horseshit.

*perhaps the non obese put in 1.8% of their time exercising as baxus proposes and they believe this extremely marginal effort is why they are non obese and why they are so very, very virtuous.

[Ormond]

4 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I've seen it as an argument for not closing things like malls - because the weather is basically bad enough to make it too hard. This is especially true for senior citizens. Though a lot of the places I've seen people live in rural areas have no sidewalks and people live on 45mph roads. 

There are solutions, and workarounds, but it isn't such an easy thing for everyone. 

I guess to me thinking that walking on a "45 mph road" in a truly rural area is "unsafe" is close to the attitudes of city dwellers who won't let their children go outside to play any more because they are afraid of them being kidnapped and murdered. It's being unreasonably afraid of an extremely unlikely possibility which prevents you from doing something whose benefit statistically way outweighs the tiny possibility of major harm.

[Datepalm]

The built environment-obesity correlation is somewhat unclear, but to the best of my recollection, the argument is less about whether sidewalks, parks, etc, exist per se, but rather about the likeliness and, really, unavoidability of incorporating a fair amount of walking into daily routine. If you live in a walkable area, which has less to do with passable sidewalks (though it has some) and more to do with distance access to amenities. Ie, can you pop down to the shop, the bus station, walk to work, walk to your dentist, whatever, then you probably will be walking at least some of that, and it accumulates. If most things that have you leaving the house, have you leaving it by car, that walking exercise is gone. It's probably not an explanation in itself, but its argued to be one more factor.

[Iskaral Pust]

I wanted to chime in quickly on the topic of food deserts, because it’s one of those complicated co-dependent situations:

Lots of low income people in the US do not have convenient access, e.g. walking distance, to a purveyor of fresh fruit and vegetables.  Part of that is because a lot of low income people live in rural areas where all stores of any type are a long drive from their home.  But let’s set that group aside.  The group that gets most attention in this topic is the urban poor who primarily have a local bodega or convenience store (like a 7-11) in their immediate neighborhood and might have to drive or take a bus to reach a large grocery store.  There is no problem with population density, so why the gap in the market?

One reason is that fresh fruit and vegetables are highly perishable and represent risky inventory for any small business.  Another reason is that the owners of these bodegas have found that their customers generally don’t buy fresh fruits and vegetables when offered, just like most low income school kids avoid the  (free) healthy lunch options provided in schools: many state-funded school lunch programs adopted healthy menus a few years back, but then switched back when kids wouldn’t eat them.  A third reason is that any large stores operating in low income urban neighborhoods experience very high petty crime and very low profits (just look at Target’s controversial recent closure of stores in south Chicago), so the big grocery store with lots of variety cannot stay open in these neighborhoods, meaning the bodegas are the only business that can eke out a profit to keep the lights on, primarily by selling high margin, non-perishable goods that the locals actually buy — like cigarettes, alcohol, lottery tickets and packaged convenience food — all from behind bullet-proof glass.

This is a topic that gets lots of discussion in Chicago.

So fixing food deserts for the urban poor is not simple.  You would need to open state-funded/subsidized grocery stores that operate at a loss and see most of the fruit & vegetables offered go unsold and rotten each week.  But at least the small number of people who do want them would have greater access, and you might eventually see an improvement over time in awareness and demand. (Even though supply-side theory generally fails)

The problem with free markets is that they connect willing buyers and sellers.  For a variety of reasons — lack of education, cost per calorie, lack of time, prioritizing near term pleasure, etc — low income people as a group have less willingness to buy healthy food.  For similar behavioral (but not economic) reasons they exhibit similar low demand for exercise and for avoiding unhealthy, addictive substances like tobacco, alcohol, drugs, etc.  This suggests that it is not a direct economic causation (healthy food is too expensive) that is the major problem, but a socio-economic problem (being poor makes you less likely to forgo pleasures to improve long term health), which may also be somewhat bidirectional.  But that’s a huge other topic that I don’t want to touch. 

[Heartofice]

8 hours ago, lokisnow said:

For some odd reason, no one talks to smokers like that, but those treating the obese make counterproductive rhetoric of this kind a standard piece in their arsenal of failed treatment regimes.

Well there is a reason for that though. Food isn't addictive in the same way that Nicotine is. We also cannot just stop eating food. Obese people just need to eat a lot less food than they are used to doing. 

Obviously cutting out all the food you enjoy can be mentally pretty hard to take, which is why a lot of PTs preach about cheat meals. And it makes sense, because if you eat a cheat meal and still stay under your caloric limit for the week then you will lose weight, fact. It won't throw you off and make you fall off the wagon in the same way a cigarette or a drink of booze will. Instead it might help to reduce cravings and prevent you going crazy next time.
 

Quote

I categorically and completely reject this moral judgment. From my perspective, most non-obese people in my peer groups are extremely lazy, but they all believe themselves to be virtuous because they share the same  moral judgment you propose here.

It is actually extremely easy to be non obese, if you are so lucky as to be immune. such people have maintained their non obese homestasis their entire lives without putting any sustained effort to that maintenance*.  But they continually tell themselves how good they are for achieving such a hard state (while putting in no effort to a achieve their state). 

These words, easy and hard, and the accompanying moral weights attached to them are rather toxic and unhelpful.

I agree we shouldn't be attaching moral judgements to obesity, but we shouldn't also be letting obesity off the hook or give people victim status for what is really a self inflicted condition. I actually think its incredibly hard to maintain levels of obesity. If I had to eat north of 3000 calories a day just to maintain my weight I would seriously struggle. But for some people 3000 calories is a deficit. 

 

[baxus]

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

When it only works 7% of the time, it is ineffective. If you had a goal to quit smoking and it worked 7% of the time, it would be ineffective. Even worse, diet and exercise do work, but most people revert to what they were like beforehand. Relapsing means it is also not effective.

I love how you just go with the assumption that 100% of people who claim are doing the "diet and exercise" combo are actually doing it. I mean, it's not as if anyone ever lied about that, is it? Do you have the percentage of people that really stick with diet and exercise long enough to actually get results? Comparing that percentage to this 7% you speak of would give us a better picture.

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

The alternative is instead of promoting massive individual effort in the face of overwhelming social and personal and genetic pressure and shaming people who cannot overcome their existence as humans in the face of this, we start figuring out and combatting the overall causes.

As I said, it takes effort. Also, that effort pays off. Not necessarily through six-pack but definitely through improved health.

What the hell does "genetic pressure" mean? Or "overcome their existence as humans"? Where do you come up with these? 

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yes, because I'm sure a person cooking dinner for their family is totally fine with just walking at that point instead of watching TV. People watch TV while doing other things, like taking care of kids and the like.

And, as I said, exercise isn't the real problem. Americans are eating something between 500 to 1000 calories per day more than they did 50 years ago. In order to burn that off, you have to be exercising vigorously for an hour or more. The bigger problem isn't the exercise not being done - the bigger problem is the consumption.

Is the person in question cooking dinner for 4 hours each day?

Is someone forcefully shoving all this excess food down Americans mouths? Or is there a moment where they choose to eat so much?

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It's absurd when your coworkers ask you to go to lunch and you can't because you have to eat the thing you packed from home. It's absurd when you tell your family that you can't spend time with them because you need to go walking for an hour after you get home from your 14+ hour workday. It's absurd because going to the supermarket is about 80% bad choices, which also happen to be the cheapest ones.

So, the way to lose weight is to force everyone else to adapt to your lifestyle? Have everyone pack lunch before you can do it? Guess what, you can wait for that but it's not going to happen. You need to do what's best for you - if that means packing lunch then it's packing lunch. If you choose to not do that, you can't blame it solely on food industry or society as a whole.

As stated already, obese people shouldn't do intense exercise at first. So, there's no need for gyms or equipment one might find there. You can take your kids for a walk or ride a bike with them, shoot some hoops or do whatever. No reason to exclude your family from these activities.

I know a bunch of people who bring their kids to workouts. You know what? Kids love it! Of course they don't do any weightlifting and stuff like that, but they like running, tumbling and climbing all over the place.

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

How does this jive with the notion that businesses bear no responsibility? They want to make it a daily thing, and they promote it that way too. And our society accepts it and encourages it.

Businesses are businesses. They are not your friend. They look after their own best interests that may or may not match your best interest.

It is your responsibility to not let them sucker you into eating junk too often.

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

It certainly can be done, but if it's that difficult (and every single study indicates that it is), it's not going to be effective. Which is why I say that as a policy, 'just diet and exercise' is an incredibly ineffective one.

I guess you'd say that "have everyone pack their lunch so I can pack one, too" is a much more effective one?

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Basically it is the food industry's problem. Cigarette manufacturers and opioid manufacturers are also in the business of making money - that does not remotely excuse their behavior for selling things that are known health risks, known addictive consumptives, and marketed towards people who cannot reasonably choose for themselves. 

There are a whole lot of studies on this, but basically humans are a lot closer to dogs than cats, in that if there's food, we'll eat it - especially high-calorie foods. A cool study showed that if you make a human forget that they ate a meal they'll eat that meal again - even if they already ate it. The only reason humans stop eating is because it's socially unacceptable or they are literally too physically full to eat more. 

Essentially your argument is that humans need to have more self-control, which again is like telling a heroin user to beat it by just saying no. It doesn't work in the vast, overwhelming majority of cases.

The whole point I'm trying to make that, while obesity is a problem partially caused by the food industry, it's not the food industry's problem. Food industry is doing just fine.

It is the people who are having a problem and it is people who need to take action.

How can you "make a human forget that they ate a meal"? What kind of crowd you are hanging out with if people eat until they can fit no more food in their bodies? And, even if that's the case, how on Earth is that NOT a personal thing? How exactly is it that the food industry is forcing you to eat until you can't eat any more? I understand that there are some psychological issues such an individual might be experiencing but then it's once again up to that individual to seek help.

And stop comparing food to heroin. It is not the same, it has never been the same and it will never be the same, no matter how many times you repeat that. There are literally billions of people around the globe who have enough food and are still not obese and have no addiction to food (aside from the obvious biological "I need to eat to live" one).

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

If you want people to lose weight you need to have them cut alcohol; alcohol for confusing reasons seems to depress the weight loss of people beyond the actual calories. 

No, you don't need to cut out anything. You need to use it moderately. No one has ever had a problem from having a glass of wine with lunch or a beer or two on a night out with friends. The same goes for having an occasional candy bar, a piece of cake, a slice of pizza, a burger or whatever.

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

You can choose to just do a bit of heroin. No harm in that.

Once again, food ≠ heroin. I hope we don't need to get back to this again.

17 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Cool beans. That isn't the case for a whole lot of people in the US. Especially rural Americans, who have very little places they can walk safely, have longer commute times, do not have public parks, etc. There's a reason that in America the people who are less likely to be overweight are the ones in urban areas.

And you think that rural wherever is much different from rural US?

[baxus]

9 hours ago, lokisnow said:

there's 168 hours in a week

your typical obese manual laborer works 60 hours a week

60 hours is 35.7% of the week.

She burns about 400 calories more per hour doing manual labor than a typical "virtuous" non obese white collar 'worker' (who enjoys complaining about how lazy obese laborers like her are).

that's a surplus calorie burn of 24,000 calories a week over our "virtuous" non obese white collar worker (who spends 60 hours a week watching netflix)

She's still obese.

You're claiming that the key for her to be non-obese is to go from spending 35.7% of her time on significant physical labor to 37.5% of her time on it, and that the extra 3 hours of exercise and 1500 calories will cure her obesity.

That's horseshit.

I'd honestly like to see the person burning 24,000 calories a week at work, let alone 24,000 calories MORE than anyone else does at work.

Since you're so fond of doing it, let's break that one down a bit, shall we?

That's 4000 calories per day (let's go with 6 days workweek, just for easy maths) at work ONLY. And that's ONLY the calorie count that exceeds regular, white collar worker.

We need to add to that the basal metabolic rate (BMR) which is an individual thing. Basically, it represents the amount of energy you use just to stay alive without losing weight, not moving a muscle throughout the day. Last time I had that checked, mine was 1800-1900 calories at 77-78kgs so I'm guessing it's safe to say that obese person's BMR is around 2,000 calories.

So, the maths comes up to (6,000 + X) calories, where X is the amount of calories a white-collar worker spends at his/her job and is > 0.

Let us consider for a moment that Michael Phelps, the greatest Olympic athlete that's ever lived, at his peak athletic performance levels was eating around 6,000 calories per day while he was training full-time basically pushing the limits of what's humanly possible.

So yeah... as you so eloquently put it - that's horseshit.

P.S. I know that there were reports of Phelps eating 12,000 calories a day at the time but he himself laughed it off, called that impossible and provided 6,000 calories as a ball-park figure.

[Luzifer's right hand]

Limiting adverts for unhealthy food could help (everything that is not fresh produce and unprocessed animal products). Completely outlawing adverts targeting minors should be the first step.  

That approach worked somewhat for cigarettes. 

[Jo498]

I think "food deserts" are rare or even non-existent in continental Europe. They seem fairly recent in the US. From my personal experience having lived in Seattle about a year in 1995/96 and having travelled both then and later (2004) to other places in the US, I do not recall anything of the sort, there always seemed fairly large and well sorted supermarkets (with huge fresh produce sections) around but I probably never got into places that would be such deserts.

So it is strange that food deserts should be an effect of economy if they don't exist elsewhere. As obesity is pretty bad elsewhere (e.g. in Europe although usually not quite as bad as in the US) they are also not likely to be the main reason for obesity.

As for forbidding certain types of foods, this seems going too far. (I am happy that smoking is more restricted now than it used to be but I am against prohibition of tobacco and similar drugs.) Restricting advertising is another question, I would probably favor that. It is ridiculous that sugary crap is advertised as healthy and especially targetted at children. This comes close enough to fraudulent advertising that a ban could be justified (not that I think it is likely, the power structures of late capitalism being as they actually are).

But banning the sweet cereals altogether? I usually have basic oatmeal with fruit but once in a while I like the sweet crunchy stuff and as a non-overweight adult I think I should have the right to eat that.

Otherwise, I am generally with Baxus although I suspect that this is to some extent because the situation in Europe is still somewhat different than in the US (and in Serbia? still different than in Germany). One does not need anything beyond what everybody in a Western society has (comfortable clothes and sneakers) to start moderate exercise, namely walking (later running) and bodyweight stuff you can do in your room or in  a public park. And there is very basic healthy food that should be available without going to great lengths: oatmeal, dairy, eggs, the cheapest seasonal fruit and vegetables (or frozen), potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice etc. Meat might be problem because it can be expensive to get quality meat but with eggs and dairy and legumes one can do with very little meat. One might need a little more time to prepare food but people are wasting so much time for all kinds of things, one can also watch or listen to stuff while some preparation/cooking takes place. And many things don't actually take more time than the alternative. Instant oatmeal is as quick as cheerios (or whatever sugary stuff) and you can cut up an apple while the tea brews or so. If we have ot count minutes than the problem is far more general that people are stressed out and overworked or whatever.

[Heartofice]

On the subject of advertising for junk food, here in London there is a junk food advertising ban on the tube. 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-46306198

I'm sure this sounds great on paper (although a lot of people disagree) but you can see that the definition of junk food is really loose. Just the other day an advert featuring bacon and butter had to be changed because apparently those foods constitute as junk now?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-47444107

Therein lies the problem. Food is only unhealthy if you overeat it. You can eat cake and sweets and icecream if you like and you won't put on weight if there rest of your diet means you aren't going over a calorie limit. Sugar in of itself isn't an issue. A balanced diet is always key. 

You have seen how there have been huge over reactions to things like saturated fats and recently sugar in the press and in law. I think we have to be very careful about prescribing what people can and can't eat.

[Week]

3 hours ago, baxus said:

And stop comparing food to heroin. It is not the same, it has never been the same and it will never be the same, no matter how many times you repeat that. There are literally billions of people around the globe who have enough food and are still not obese and have no addiction to food (aside from the obvious biological "I need to eat to live" one).

Uh ... there is a ton of history on a plethora of eating disorders as well as new research that suggest that there are similar behaviors and biological pathways involved in drug addiction and food. Considering the importance of sugar in the latter -- and the ubiquity of sugar-added foods (i.e. high fructose corn syrup as the first ingredient in a condiment like ketchup) -- there is a clear comparison to be made.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2235907/

Quote

Conclusion:

From an evolutionary perspective, it is in the best interest of humans to have an inherent desire for food for survival. However, this desire may go awry, and certain people, including some obese and bulimic patients in particular, may develop an unhealthy dependence on palatable food that interferes with well-being. The concept of “food addiction” materialized in the diet industry on the basis of subjective reports, clinical accounts and case studies described in self-help books. The rise in obesity, coupled with the emergence of scientific findings of parallels between drugs of abuse and palatable foods has given credibility to this idea. The reviewed evidence supports the theory that, in some circumstances, intermittent access to sugar can lead to behavior and neurochemical changes that resemble the effects of a substance of abuse. According to the evidence in rats, intermittent access to sugar and chow is capable of producing a “dependency”. This was operationally defined by tests for bingeing, withdrawal, craving and cross-sensitization to amphetamine and alcohol. The correspondence to some people with binge eating disorder or bulimia is striking, but whether or not it is a good idea to call this a “food addiction” in people is both a scientific and societal question that has yet to be answered. What this review demonstrates is that rats with intermittent access to food and a sugar solution can show both a constellation of behaviors and parallel brain changes that are characteristic of rats that voluntarily self-administer addictive drugs. In the aggregrate, this is evidence that sugar can be addictive.

Fairly clear in bold -- with a nod to the italicized point of "whether or not it is a good idea to call this a "food addiction" in people is both a scientific and societal question that has yet to be answered"

[Jo498]

A simple, if radical solution would be banning ALL food advertising...

While I am not totally on board with the low carb craze, there seem clear indications that "low-fat" might have had a paradoxical role in the rising obesity. Everybody who bothers to look will see that "low fat yoghurt" has usually lots of calories from sugar, as even normal fat yoghurt has more calories from sugar than from fat. And whoever has prepared some dessert with cream etc. will know that with more cream/fat one needs less sugar because the fat also enhances the taste. But the main thing is that fat usually keeps one sated longer than sugar.

I am pessimistic wrt general bannings and improvements because we are a schizophrenic society preaching both excessive greed/indulgence and a sort of puritanism and shallow self-perfection (through exercise and healthy or superfood) at once and many will simply be unable to navigate the influences, in addition to their everyday tasks. But on a personal level it is in principle not difficult to eat healthy.

 

[Jo498]

Such similarites to hard drugs might show a way for "therapies" or what could be done. But by themselves they cannot be a stringent reason for bans and the like. We all know (and have know for ages) that alcohol is highly addictive. Still, prohibition or even a banning of ads would be unthinkable in most of the world (not the US, but certainly in most of Europe).

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

I feel like there’s so much other thinking here. Just go outside, exercise and eat better. It’s not hard.

[.H.]

3 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I feel like there’s so much other thinking here. Just go outside, exercise and eat better. It’s not hard.

No, it's not hard, it's literally impossible for some because the majority of people don't want to both exercise and eat better.

My wife works part-time at a gym.  The things some people tell her are outrageous.  They don't understand calories or CICO, they can't fathom what a carbohydrate even is, let alone what is or isn't one, and they really don't want to.  They just want to do what they find pleasurable and have there be no consequences.  They laugh at the idea of even considering eating a vegetable.

Has anyone here ever seen those silly-ass shows on TLC, like My 600 Pound Life?  These people are slamming back calories at a rate that literally makes my deficient and ill-working digestive system ache and we are to think that this is because of advertising?  Obviously these are wildly extreme examples, but they are (in my mind) indicative of the psychological forces at work.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, .H. said:

No, it's not hard, it's literally impossible for some because the majority of people don't want to both exercise and eat better.

My wife works part-time at a gym.  The things some people tell her are outrageous.  They don't understand calories or CICO, they can't fathom what a carbohydrate even is, let alone what is or isn't one, and they really don't want to.  They just want to do what they find pleasurable and have there be no consequences.  They laugh at the idea of even considering eating a vegetable.

Has anyone here ever seen those silly-ass shows on TLC, like My 600 Pound Life?  These people are slamming back calories at a rate that literally makes my deficient and ill-working digestive system ache and we are to think that this is because of advertising?  Obviously these are wildly extreme examples, but they are (in my mind) indicative of the psychological forces at work.

And there you go. This is as much a will power thing as anything else. Technology has made humans soft. There’s always an excuse. I interact constantly with people who complain about their weight, and after just a few questions you can figure out why. It’s one thing if you have a medical barrier, but not wanting to work out and eat healthy seems to be the overwhelming reason why people are out of shape.  

[Heartofice]

10 minutes ago, .H. said:

No, it's not hard, it's literally impossible for some because the majority of people don't want to both exercise and eat better.

My wife works part-time at a gym.  The things some people tell her are outrageous.  They don't understand calories or CICO, they can't fathom what a carbohydrate even is, let alone what is or isn't one, and they really don't want to.  They just want to do what they find pleasurable and have there be no consequences.  They laugh at the idea of even considering eating a vegetable.

Has anyone here ever seen those silly-ass shows on TLC, like My 600 Pound Life?  These people are slamming back calories at a rate that literally makes my deficient and ill-working digestive system ache and we are to think that this is because of advertising?  Obviously these are wildly extreme examples, but they are (in my mind) indicative of the psychological forces at work.

I think a lot of this comes down to sense of identity, and a fear of change. 

A lot of overweight people I know display many of the same signs that you describe, they don't want to do the hard work, they think vegetables are disgusting, they think people who go to the gym are meat heads. There is a sense that they use their weight as form of protection and hide behind it, and are quite scared to take the steps that will actually get them to a place where they are at a healthy weight, maybe because it means accepting that there is a problem, maybe because they might face embarrassment by being on a diet or working out. 

I think there is also a sense of pride in their ignorance and lifestyle, they make jokes about being able to eat, or being hungry or eating bad foods. I've heard people act like its funny to not know what foods are healthy and which aren't. I know people who will stubbornly refuse to eat a salad as if it is fundamentally going against everything they believe. 

Going on a diet is not easy, but its not impossible. I think one of the solutions is to make losing weight less embarrassing. I know plenty of girls for instance who are on diets, but mostly they don't need to be. None of the overweight girls I know would own up to being on a diet because it would lead to someone saying 'good! You need to!', or at least thats what they fear.

[Conflicting Thought]

9 minutes ago, .H. said:

No, it's not hard, it's literally impossible for some because the majority of people don't want to both exercise and eat better.

My wife works part-time at a gym.  The things some people tell her are outrageous.  They don't understand calories or CICO, they can't fathom what a carbohydrate even is, let alone what is or isn't one, and they really don't want to.  They just want to do what they find pleasurable and have there be no consequences.  They laugh at the idea of even considering eating a vegetable.

Has anyone here ever seen those silly-ass shows on TLC, like My 600 Pound Life?  These people are slamming back calories at a rate that literally makes my deficient and ill-working digestive system ache and we are to think that this is because of advertising?  Obviously these are wildly extreme examples, but they are (in my mind) indicative of the psychological forces at work.

And of course those psychological forces are heavily influenced by external sources such as advertising. 

I find it strange that people are fighting against such a proven thing. Advertising has an important  role and a big impact on how we internalize this things, and it acts in very subtle ways in our brains.