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

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

If it's not hard, why don't half of the US population do it now, and why did they somehow miraculously do it 50 years ago? 

Because we've become lazy, greedy and dumb.

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People don't want to stop a whole lot of addictive behaviors, even when they know they're bad for them. That's how addictive behaviors work. 

I suffer from addiction, so I know how it works. You have to have self-control. Sure there are outside factors that affect people like cognitive and physical medical issues, poverty, environmental drivers, etc., but people do need to take responsibility for their own physical well being.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Because we've become lazy, greedy and dumb.

Do you really believe that humans across the planet have become lazy, greedy and dumb, and before this we were smart, energetic and selfless? Honestly? 

And if you do believe that, why did that happen? If you think that's an issue, surely there is some cause that should be reversed, no? 

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

I suffer from addiction, so I know how it works.

Cool! Then you'll know how important it is to have support groups, to avoid triggers, to work heavily on changing patterns with other people, to enlist in medical help such as Methadone or other detoxing methods, and to in general make the addiction part of your social construct. 

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You have to have self-control. 

...or, maybe you don't know how it works

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Sure there are outside factors that affect people like cognitive and physical medical issues, poverty, environmental drivers, etc., but people do need to take responsibility for their own physical well being.

Again, people are taking responsibility for their well-being and they're still getting fatter. The FDA still, to this day, says fats are bad, sugar and grains are good. Advertising everywhere tells you that low-fat food is healthy when it has massive sugar. Calorie counting is still incredibly hard, assuming you can even get calorie information. 

If you really believe that self-control is the key and it is a skill,  then here's the obvious conclusion - our society is failing utterly at teaching it and practicing it. There are 100 million people in the US with adverse conditions because of this (according to you). How do you propose to solve it? Because so far, telling them that they have to stop doing that isn't working. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

8 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Do you really believe that humans across the planet have become lazy, greedy and dumb, and before this we were smart, energetic and selfless? Honestly? 

And if you do believe that, why did that happen? If you think that's an issue, surely there is some cause that should be reversed, no? 

No, what I believe is that increases in wealth and the rise of technology have caused people in part to be that way.

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Cool! Then you'll know how important it is to have support groups, to avoid triggers, to work heavily on changing patterns with other people, to enlist in medical help such as Methadone or other detoxing methods, and to in general make the addiction part of your social construct. 

Yes, for some those are all required and for others they needs some or none of those outside of avoiding triggers. That's the big one for me. And to do this, you need to be self-aware and self-awareness leads to self-control. I'm not going to disagree with you that we've failed to teach this to everyone, but at what point does it fall on the person themselves and not other factors in their environment?

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...or, maybe you don't know how it works

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Again, people are taking responsibility for their well-being and they're still getting fatter. The FDA still, to this day, says fats are bad, sugar and grains are good. Advertising everywhere tells you that low-fat food is healthy when it has massive sugar. Calorie counting is still incredibly hard, assuming you can even get calorie information. 

If you really believe that self-control is the key and it is a skill,  then here's the obvious conclusion - our society is failing utterly at teaching it and practicing it. There are 100 million people in the US with adverse conditions because of this (according to you). How do you propose to solve it? Because so far, telling them that they have to stop doing that isn't working. 

I have not met many obese individuals that I would say are taking responsibility. Often times I actually hear a litany of excuses for why they are the way they are. Now, some are quite valid, but often times I hear that people just don't want to exercise or go on a diet. And that's what I was touching on. 

[Varysblackfyre321]

On 3/5/2019 at 9:34 AM, Kalbear said:

hey have dropped significantly, as it turns out, and they have made changes - by selling even worse things like energy drinks and nutrasweet-laden drinks. But they certainly haven't started selling healthier options.

It is easier and more lucrative to merely to advertise unhealthy products as healthy rather than actually making changes to current products to make them healthy.  Like with Tobacco. There was the "tobacco-lite" campaign that was obviously meant to decieve the population into thinking the product in question was healthy or healthier than the old tobacco products. It simply wasnt  I remember watching a documentary on Netflix it kinda went into how the food industry reacted to the "let's get moving" movement Micelle Obama was pushing, and how they turned the message of accountability from the food industry to kids simply need to exersise more. And companies made a small reduction in their serving size while lowering the cost. 

[baxus]

15 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

Many good posts here. I'll try to answer more of them when I get to a computer. 

Just a question though, to those of you making the argument that people should just take their responsibility and stop eating so much unhealthy stuff: what, if anything, do you think should be done to combat the obesity epidemic? (It's actually the same question as in the thread title.)

Because it seems obvious to me that for whatever reason, leaving it up to people to help themselves doesn't work. Obesity and related illnesses are still on the rise. Is there something we as a society should do about that, or do we just accept it?

I didn't say that it's only up to people to stop eating so much unhealthy stuff, I said that that is what people can do at this moment. Everything else that needs to be done will take quite a lot of time to happen. Currently obese people will have little use of regulations enforced on the food industry in 30-40 years time. Of course, that wasn't an argument against starting to work on making and enforcing such regulations.

12 hours ago, Kalbear said:

There are billions of people who consume opiates without a single problem in their life. There are plenty of people who have alcohol and are not addicted either. 

That does not mean either of those things are not addictive.

It's funny how it switched from heroine to opiates in an instant, isn't it?

Even so, I'd say that claim that billions of people are using opiates on a regular basis and have no problems because of it is a shaky one. The same goes for alcohol.

12 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Alternately, you can force the food industry to do the right thing. I agree - the food industry has a massive incentive to have you overeat. They design their food precisely to make you want to overeat. This sounds like hyperbole, but it isn't; it was literally designed to provide just enough taste, just enough salt, and just enough flavor for you to want to eat more without going overboard. They are deliberately making their food to be as highly consumed as possible, because that makes them more money. 

Therefore, we as a culture need to stop putting the onus on individuals to fight basic tenets of human genetics and start pushing back on obviously dangerous systems of food. Does it mean banning? In some cases, probably. In others, it means things like taxes, advertising bans, putting food in places that are out of reach of kids, restricting of food in schools, vending machines, education processes. 

But the idea that any individual is going to fight back against this kind of onslaught of advertising, marketing, peer pressure, guilt, shame, loathing, and environment is laughable. And we know it to be laughable, because it does not work.

We do need to fight the food industry but it's a long lasting process, just like it was with cigarettes and (to a lesser extent) alcohol. It took decades to get to the point where smoking became undesirable behavior. That happened through regulating tobacco industry and massive marketing effort and something similar needs to be done with food industry as well. Not trying to deny that.

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

A whole lot of humans - probably all of them, but definitely most - have genetic components that basically cause unhealthy eating patterns. For example, if you diet too much you reduce your metabolism heavily, and it never comes back, because your body considers that as a sign that you're in a food-poor environment. When you eat 'normally' again, you find out that you gain back the weight faster because of this. This was, as a hideous example, what happened with most of the people who did Biggest Loser - in that study, 13 of the 14 ended up gaining back almost all the weight, AND had a worse metabolic rate.

First of all, you seem to have just solved the whole "nature vs nurture" debate that has been going on in the scientific community for decades, if not centuries. Please, publish those findings and continue to collect your Nobel prize.

Joking aside, genes do impose some limitations but don't determine your future. Also, metabolism is not something that is written in stone and can't be changed. Your metabolic rates can increase or decrease based on your actions. Exercise helps increase it and that's why it's is important, not just because of burning more calories.

The Biggest Loser is probably the worst possible example you can use since it's had more than a fair share of controversy. Basically, it was a TV show and it had one goal only - to get participants to lose weight by any means necessary. Participants were even starved and deprived of water before weigh-ins. TV show producers didn't care about the long-term effects such treatment would have on participants' health or if the weight loss would stick around after cameras turn off.

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Choice in the face of addiction is illusory.

While I'm not trying to deny addiction to food, not having cupcakes is hardly going to cause cupcake withdrawal.

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Again, the notion that it's the individual's responsibility to fight back against the massive cultural, environmental, and physical things going against them is ludicrous. And again, we know this, because we are in the middle of a crisis, and the individual responsibility thing doesn't work. 

How do you propose we change these "massive cultural, environmental, and physical things"? Let's say that you want government to, for example, impose additional taxes to sodas. I doubt it would make a significant dent in the sales (except if government goes crazy with tax rates). It will only make soda more expensive for people who buy it. Bottom line - less money in consumers' pockets (who you claim are mostly poor people who can ill afford to lose any more of it) and more money for the government. The only way that could work is if government then uses that money for educating people on how junk food is harmful. That would work, but it would take decades to work.

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I'd say that until everyone regularly packs their lunch, it's going to be a problem. Either the restaurants need to be healthier and have lot more healthy options, or people need to understand better the limits of what people should and shouldn't do. I'm not advocating banning eating bad food; I'm advocating shunning it. 

For everyone to regularly pack their lunch, everyone needs to want to pack their lunch. That decision is an individual one and can't be enforced.

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

And I'm trying to make the point that it is them that are the biggest cause, and we as a society need to MAKE IT their problem. They won't do it for us, and until we make it their problem it will be ours

The most effective way to do it is by not buying their products, or buying them less often. Regulating it through laws, taxes etc. will work but too late for most of the people currently affected.

11 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Again, there are billions of people who have taken opiates and are not addicted.

Again, I'm not quite sure that's true.  

[Jo498]

I think the comparison with smoking shows how difficult and long the way to actual bans would be. Even when almost half the population smoked, it was frowned upon to some extent and non-smoking areas existed. And it took 30 or 40 or even more years to ban advertising, restrict smoking areas and so on, even after the health issues were known and it was also obvious that passive bystanders would be effected by smokers. Whereas bystanders of obesity are mostly effected by the socialized costs or the suffering of friends and family, not directly. (Protecting people from themselves is a far more paternalist move than protecting bystanders from second-hand smoke, so far more people will oppose such measure in principle. Would we want a "leeegalize" movement for snacks among the progressive youth of 2040?)

One needs to eat, but one does not need to smoke. Smoking is never healthy, whereas with unhealthy food it is usually the quantity that makes the poison. It will very probably be far more difficult to install warnings and bans because the industy will fight it and will pervert it (like with low fat crap that was actually worse than regular fat would have been, with artificial sweeteners not as innocent as they appear etc.).

Therefore I think for purely practical reasons one should focus more on the individual or what could be done on a smaller scale; this could include spreading information, local support groups, whatever. It is cold comfort for pre-diabetics here and now if maybe in 20 or 30 years the food industry will be brought to heel and pay for their seductive and misleading advertising etc.

[drawkcabi]

12 hours ago, lokisnow said:

I was having a science fiction moment earlier today, trying to imagine how a drug therapy treatment for obesity might present.

/snip

/this has been your science fiction moment of the day.

When I was in my early twenties I wrote a short story, well it began as one and ended up more a novella. Anyway, the story was about a meteor crashing to earth and affecting the water supply. It caused a massive disease to spread in humans called fat cell disease. It basically attacked the fat cells burning them up rapidly while at the same time enhancing a body's muscles, reflexes, ability to heal, and other senses until it got to the point where those positive effects no longer allowed the remaining fat cells to burn off, the human body needs some fat cells after all, but it ended up with a lot of people lean and ripped with no amount of excess fat.

So basically it ended turning the world's fat people into Captain Americas. The more obese a person was at the beginning, the more powerful they were after going through the disease and it followed one particular character going through this.

It also turned out that the disease was created by aliens to genetically modify the human race to create a bunch of super soldiers for their use, but that was only barely hinted at, I was saving that reveal for sequels I never got to.

[The Anti-Targ]

Tax the shit out of junk food and use that tax to cut the price of minimally and unprocessed foods. The problem with obesity is foods that have fat and carbs both in high proportions, and there are basically no single ingredient foods that have that. Low income people buy junk food because it's what they can afford, they can't afford fresh produce and fresh meat. Busy people working 2/3 jobs to get by financially buy ready made / heat and eat foods because they have no time.

[Gorn]

Things that would really help with both the obesity crisis and the environment:

1. Making cities more pedestrian- and bike-friendly (especially in the US)

2. Applying social pressure on people not to use cars for short distance trips that would require less than 20 mins of walking

3. Putting an end to zoning and encouraging mixed-use developments.

[Heartofice]

I think its pretty clear one simple answer isn't going to be enough because the problem has so many variables and causes, and they aren't always the same for everyone.

A few things I would do:

- I think a major issue is that children don't eat vegetables because they don't like them, their parent don't force them to do it and so when they grow up they turn into adults who don't eat their veg. This is a specifically lower class westerns issue and pretty cultural I've found. More education for parents on how to get their children to eat their greens, and how important is.
I'm generally against telling parents or institutions what to do, but more has to be done to push schools to add fresh fruit and veg to their dinners. We had Jamie Oliver over here trying to do this and it resulted in an enormous backlash by parents demanding their children be allowed to eat fish and chips and burgers.. so it is a huge challenge.
But in general I think parents need to have more education on how to raise healthy children, and not take the easy way out of giving them what they want or allowing them to snack on crisps and chocolate. You'd be amazed how many times in the supermarket I see parents loading up their trollys with packs of crips and sugary drinks while their kids look longingly at them. It creates bad habits from the start, which I think most people don't ever manage to get over.

- I know insurance companies are now doing more and more to encourage activity, giving discounts etc if you use their apps, and yeah it sounds like 1984, but it does seem to give an incentive to work out. 

- Companies should give discounts for local gyms, and also encourage their employees to use them. I've worked in places that have gyms, but there was never time to actually go use them during the day. Add the fact that their canteens usually serve up chips and pies and there are vending machines for chocolate everywhere, it wasn't surprising how unhealthy everyone was. 
 

[Alarich II]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

We had Jamie Oliver over here trying to do this and it resulted in an enormous backlash by parents demanding their children be allowed to eat fish and chips and burgers.

I've read about this and it is absolutely mind-bending to have parents that are actually intervening to have their offspring fed with with inferior and unhealthy food. Why? Because their kids don't like it. Why do they not like it? Because their parents have fed them this crap. And instead of being grateful that at least some total stranger cares enough about their childs future and current health to give them decent food, they do everything to protect their kids unhealthy eating habits. This borders on child abuse IMO.

[Heartofice]

46 minutes ago, Alarich II said:

I've read about this and it is absolutely mind-bending to have parents that are actually intervening to have their offspring fed with with inferior and unhealthy food. Why? Because their kids don't like it. Why do they not like it? Because their parents have fed them this crap. And instead of being grateful that at least some total stranger cares enough about their childs future and current health to give them decent food, they do everything to protect their kids unhealthy eating habits. This borders on child abuse IMO.

I think it really illustrates what we are up against. You have parents who take it as a personal insult that Jamie Oliver is telling them what their children should or shouldnt eat. They seem to think that burger and chips is a human right! I think the school system already has big problems with parents who think they know better all the time and this is just another string to that bow. 

These parents seem to think that if their child comes home hungry and complaining that they had to eat something green, then they need do something and stop it, rather than understand why those steps have been taken. 

I mean there are scenes of parents throwing chips over the school fence, as if their children are in prison!

[Iskaral Pust]

Even in this thread we see the same general contrasting view points on this topic. 

If I can paraphrase:

1. the cynical food industry has created and marketed calorie bombs to an unsuspecting public.  If we regulate and tax this aggressively, obesity will end and everyone will be happy, or

2. our diet and lifestyle is a personal choice we all make every single day.  At this stage ignorance is a choice.  There is plenty of information for anyone to avoid obesity, and no-one really believes that cake is healthy or fails to notice their swelling dimensions over the years. 

It sounds a lot like the general political spectrum to me, with (1) people are basically virtuous but naive, so the nanny state will protect them from evil profiteers, or (2) everything comes down to personal responsibility.  The secondary tenets are (1) it’s not your fault if you are fat and no-one should ever make you feel bad about yourself, or (2) everyone has self-determination and can be thin/healthy/fit if they want to be, so it’s a personal failure/weakness if you are not.

I have some sympathy for both.  I do think that education, transparency, calorie reporting, etc are necessary, but I also don’t believe that most people will voluntarily forgo calorie-dense food unless they become personally invested in their health and fitness.  We can attempt to tax it into oblivion, but I don’t like the morality of prohibition (and this is would be much worse than prohibiting alcohol or drugs).

My greatest source of hope is that our sudden increase in obesity was because our net calorie wealth (both in calories available for consumption and calories saved from less physically laborious lives) increased much faster than our habits, culture and norms could adapt.  But with time our habits, culture and norms will adapt.  So long as obesity is generally viewed as something negative, we will eventually trend back away from mass obesity.  The greater danger is if obesity becomes normal and accepted.

[Kalbear]

11 hours ago, baxus said:

It's funny how it switched from heroine to opiates in an instant, isn't it?

Why? Opiates are in general more addictive than heroin. The US has an opiate problem, not a heroin one. I'm happy to use heroin, but the point was simply to not equate food addicts to illicit drug users, not to make it seem like the food is less addictive. 

11 hours ago, baxus said:

Even so, I'd say that claim that billions of people are using opiates on a regular basis and have no problems because of it is a shaky one. The same goes for alcohol. 

Alcohol is almost certainly a reasonable comparison. Opiates is likely over a billion people who have used it at some point. 

11 hours ago, baxus said:

We do need to fight the food industry but it's a long lasting process, just like it was with cigarettes and (to a lesser extent) alcohol. It took decades to get to the point where smoking became undesirable behavior. That happened through regulating tobacco industry and massive marketing effort and something similar needs to be done with food industry as well. Not trying to deny that. 

It totally sounds like you're trying to deny it, speaking of individual effort. 

11 hours ago, baxus said:

First of all, you seem to have just solved the whole "nature vs nurture" debate that has been going on in the scientific community for decades, if not centuries. Please, publish those findings and continue to collect your Nobel prize. 

Joking aside, genes do impose some limitations but don't determine your future. Also, metabolism is not something that is written in stone and can't be changed. Your metabolic rates can increase or decrease based on your actions. Exercise helps increase it and that's why it's is important, not just because of burning more calories. 

I also mentioned the cultural and social aspects of addiction and behaviors in patterns, and how hard it is to go it alone and solve things based on personal free will. At the same  time, you can't simply ignore the pleasure receptors in the brain and how they interact with sugar and fat, or the way that eating sugar causes you to get tired after a reasonably short time and causes people to actually want to consume more food. You can't ignore how food scientists have designed food to make you want to eat more of it based on its texture and flavor. These things aren't an environmental factor. 

11 hours ago, baxus said:

While I'm not trying to deny addiction to food, not having cupcakes is hardly going to cause cupcake withdrawal. 

It's going to be exceptionally difficult though, and ignoring that and telling people to just deal instead of telling them that yes, it is very hard, and yes, it sucks, and understanding that it sucks and supporting said suckage is important. 

Because the alternative is to tell them that they're weak for giving in, that it's entirely on them and nothing else will matter, and if they can't do it they are lazy, greedy and dumb, as @Tywin et al. implied. Which of those methods do you think is going to work? Hint: the latter has already been shown not to work. 

11 hours ago, baxus said:

How do you propose we change these "massive cultural, environmental, and physical things"? Let's say that you want government to, for example, impose additional taxes to sodas. I doubt it would make a significant dent in the sales (except if government goes crazy with tax rates). It will only make soda more expensive for people who buy it. Bottom line - less money in consumers' pockets (who you claim are mostly poor people who can ill afford to lose any more of it) and more money for the government. The only way that could work is if government then uses that money for educating people on how junk food is harmful. That would work, but it would take decades to work. 

Good thing we already have examples of soda taxes in the US, and based on those examples soda consumption is down, the revenues are being spent on public health concerns (including education on nutrition), and it has apparently helped. The consumers buy other things instead, and it works out. 

We also have examples of taxes on other types of things working too - tobacco, alcohol, pot. If you want to reduce usage, taxing it and making it more expensive works really well. 

And yes, it might take a while. But you're the one saying that people aren't doing it because they don't care, and then you're decrying people who do something about it. 

11 hours ago, baxus said:

For everyone to regularly pack their lunch, everyone needs to want to pack their lunch. That decision is an individual one and can't be enforced.

It can, however, be encouraged.

11 hours ago, baxus said:

The most effective way to do it is by not buying their products, or buying them less often. Regulating it through laws, taxes etc. will work but too late for most of the people currently affected. 

Honestly, for most obese people it is already too late. That sucks to say, but obesity is not something that is easily or quickly reversible. Smoking addiction took a whole long time to curb and deal with and fight. It's not going to be solved in 5 years. For obese people, I suspect we need to spend more research and care into various forms of bariatric surgeries - one of the most effective ways of fighting obesity. That sucks, because the side effects of it are pretty shitty, but for a short-term fix there's not a lot better. 

Right now it's considered an optional surgery for most everyone who isn't morbidly obese. That probably needs to change.

[Kalbear]

11 hours ago, baxus said:

Again, I'm not quite sure that's true.  

Dude, codeine is an opiate. It's sold over the counter in most European countries as well as Canada and Japan. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Because the alternative is to tell them that they're weak for giving in, that it's entirely on them and nothing else will matter, and if they can't do it they are lazy, greedy and dumb, as @Tywin et al. implied. Which of those methods do you think is going to work? Hint: the latter has already been shown not to work. 

It's not to tell them they're weak and that it's entirely on them. There are obviously other factors which I laid out. But I don't know how anyone can deny that personal responsibility is the biggest factor at play.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's not to tell them they're weak and that it's entirely on them. There are obviously other factors which I laid out. But I don't know how anyone can deny that personal responsibility is the biggest factor at play.

I deny it, easily. I deny it the same way I deny that tobacco users are more responsible than tobacco manufacturers. I deny it the same way that I think opiate addicts are less responsible than the doctors who overprescribed it and the manufacturers who pushed it. 

This is especially the case because instead of thinking that this is a problem that we can solve together, with help, and having major treatment centers and a culture that understands how hard it is, we have a culture that mocks people who are overweight, says that it is their fault, says that they are lazy, greedy and dumb, and then expects them to fix themselves without any support or help. And then, when they inevitably fail (which they almost all do) uses that as a moral salve to ourselves to say 'see? Told ya they were dumb and lazy and greedy'. 

And instead of blaming the people who put addictive substances in virtually every food item you can buy at a normal store and design their food and packaging to maximally appeal and addict you, we blame that person. 

[Conflicting Thought]

9 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

It's not to tell them they're weak and that it's entirely on them. There are obviously other factors which I laid out. But I don't know how anyone can deny that personal responsibility is the biggest factor at play.

Well we have like 4 pages of reasons as to why it can be denied right here. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I deny it, easily. I deny it the same way I deny that tobacco users are more responsible than tobacco manufacturers. I deny it the same way that I think opiate addicts are less responsible than the doctors who overprescribed it and the manufacturers who pushed it. 

This is especially the case because instead of thinking that this is a problem that we can solve together, with help, and having major treatment centers and a culture that understands how hard it is, we have a culture that mocks people who are overweight, says that it is their fault, says that they are lazy, greedy and dumb, and then expects them to fix themselves without any support or help. And then, when they inevitably fail (which they almost all do) uses that as a moral salve to ourselves to say 'see? Told ya they were dumb and lazy and greedy'. 

And instead of blaming the people who put addictive substances in virtually every food item you can buy at a normal store and design their food and packaging to maximally appeal and addict you, we blame that person. 

Comparing food to heavily addictive drugs is beneath you, Kal. 

At the the end of the day, YOU, decide what goes into your body. Is predatory advertisement a problem? Yes. Are food deserts a problem? Is low quality food a problem? Yes. Etc. There are a lot of factors that go into obesity, and some are out of people's control as I've said several times, but at the end of the day, the individual has to take responsibility for their situation assuming there are no physical and/or cognitive barriers facing them. It's the first step in defeating obesity. 

[Kalbear]

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

Comparing food to heavily addictive drugs is beneath you, Kal. 

I don't see why; the scientific evidence supports me. Both in what substances are addictive to some people and how people behave around food and how that compares to addictions.

Just now, Tywin et al. said:

At the the end of the day, YOU, decide what goes into your body. Is predatory advertisement a problem? Yes. Are food deserts a problem? Is low quality food a problem? Yes. Etc. There are a lot of factors that go into obesity, and some are out of people's control as I've said several times, but at the end of the day, the individual has to take responsibility for their situation assuming there are no physical and/or cognitive barriers facing them. It's the first step in defeating obesity. 

Okay, let's say that's all true. Let's say that adults can in theory do this (despite this being increasingly obvious that they can't), and they can make the choices. And let's say that they have all the education and information about what food is and isn't good (despite, again, all the evidence that most of the information available is also misleading, full of fad diets and bad science and backed by the government, which itself was largely lobbied into pushing bad food ideas and systems). Let's say ALL of those things are somehow able to be beaten by taking responsibility for their 'situation'.

What happens to the kids? The kids don't have the ability to take responsibility for their situation. They are not the ones who decide what goes into their body. They have ALL of the problems above, except they also don't have choices about things like what food to eat or where to shop or anything like that. And once they're overweight, once their habits of eating and exercise are set, they are very, very difficult to break, and unlike what you said they are not their personal responsibility. How do you intend to fix them?