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

[lokisnow]

Uhh I would change your timeframe to 150 or 200 years ago @Kalbear 100 years ago, the mega food industries were in full tilt glee hawking their garbage processed food and pushing it heavily on urban communities and people like Jacob riis made their yellow journalism name documenting the utter and total horrors of the processed food industry.

even 150 years ago, mark Twain wrote an ironic story about a man on The make with oleo (the original processed artificial foodstuff replacement) 

but even before that processed food as we know it probably started with the trade in refined sugar. Which is still quite a ways before.

but it was not easy to eat healthy in any of these eras, it was simply expensive in actual money and mind numbingly expensive in time to eat at all.  (And very expensive to have the requisite cooking apparatuses).

As a result of those food, time and access costs, people ate much less overall.

It was really with widespread electrification leading to commercial refrigeration followed by commensurate adoption of home refrigeration in conjunction with fantastically cheap shipping costs because of post war army surplus trucks creating what would later evolve into the semi truck industry that made significant changes to what we ate and when we ate it and how much we could afford to eat. As you said there were more significant local constraints and commensurate local supply issues, but that didn’t mean eating healthier was a more natural state. When they ran out of bacon sometime at the end of the week, my grandpa would scrape the accumulated days of bacon grease  onto a slice of stale bread and eat that instead, until they were out of grease, at which point they might have procured more  bacon or they might just eat plain bread for a while.

microwave technology has its place too in accelerating this trend.

the idea that it’s easy to shop and cook and eat is a very modern  perspective. And simply hasn’t been very true for much of human history.

[Kalbear]

1 minute ago, lokisnow said:

 

 It was really with widespread electrification leading to commercial refrigeration followed by commensurate adoption of home refrigeration in conjunction with fantastically cheap shipping costs because of post war army surplus trucks creating what would later evolve into the semi truck industry that made significant changes to what we ate and when we ate it and how much we could afford to eat. As you said there were more significant local constraints and commensurate local supply issues, but that didn’t mean eating healthier was a more natural state. When they ran out of bacon sometime at the end of the week, my grandpa would scrape the accumulated days of bacon grease  onto a slice of stale bread and eat that instead, until they were out of grease, at which point they might have procured more  bacon or they might just eat plain bread for a while. 

This is, oddly enough, far more healthy than what most people eat right now. 

1 minute ago, lokisnow said:

microwave technology has its place too in accelerating this trend.

the idea that it’s easy to shop and cook and eat is a very modern  perspective. And simply hasn’t been very true for much of human history.

One of the more interesting things to me is the study of immigrants and how they adapt and adopt American eating habits. The first generation of immigrants  are fine, and future generations are not. This is not solely a scarcity issue - these are people who could afford things before, and ate fine - it's that between more work, more stress, easy-to-buy bad food and tastes developing towards everything having sugar it gets worse and worse. 

Another knock on this is that while Japanese obesity is rising, it isn't at the epidemic level that it is in the US - where 32% of US citizens are obese, only 3.6% are. For them, the costs of food and the regular lifestyle of not driving everywhere appear to be big factors, but also is the case that they simply eat more healthily as a cultural value. 

[Conflicting Thought]

This arguments favoring personal responsabilty above all else, are very indicative of the individualistic (capitalist) society we have created.

With very little empathy and no vision of what a society is, how group dinamics affect every "decision" we make. 

Its very pick your self by your bootstraps thinking. 

[Kalbear]

I hadn't actually read this guy, but he does a longer form of what I've been talking about, with a lot more data. 

His solution is interesting - incentivize big food to produce food that is both addictive and crazy healthy. 

I thought this was important - in how changing behavior is based on both motivation AND ability:

Quote

You can either increase people’s motivation by providing coaching, or you increase their ability by providing meal replacements. The latter is much easier and more likely to be successful. Ironically, most behavioral treatments focus too much on increasing motivation and too little on increasing ability. You need to have some of both to successfully cross the threshold of changing a behavior long-term.

 

[Week]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

This isn’t about money.

So if you were to Google research on income and obesity rate there would be no correlation? (Spoiler: you didn't - obesity rates are much higher in low income and low education achievement cohorts.)

[Heartofice]

6 hours ago, Week said:

So if you were to Google research on income and obesity rate there would be no correlation? (Spoiler: you didn't - obesity rates are much higher in low income and low education achievement cohorts.)

Correlation is not causation.

[baxus]

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

But you're also saying that you don't find them at fault for this. How does that make sense?

I don't find them at fault. They are working within the laws and rules set upon them. When we, as a society, impose different set of rules on them then they will operate within those. Until then, they are doing nothing wrong according to the current set of rules.

We can disagree with what they are doing on a personal level, chose to spend as little as possible on their products and financially support alternative food manufacturers. If we don't do that, then it's OUR fault, not food industry's fault.

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

And we've seen that this doesn't work and fails as a rule. Like, you get that we have examples of this failing over and over again, right? I like the idea, but it doesn't work in practice at all. It doesn't work with smoking, it doesn't work with drinking, it doesn't work with anything really. 

Again, if your choices are 'eat healthy and be ostracized' or 'eat badly and be social' humans will choose the latter almost every time, and they'll be miserable when they don't. There's another good example here, about how some people only smoked socially because they wanted to not stand out. Or they only drank socially for the same reason. You can't just ignore social dynamics and wave them away. Humans aren't perfect spheres.

Hey, let's get real here. It is in human nature to go down the path of least resistance. No one is denying that. Still, that doesn't mean we HAVE to take that path, does it? It is difficult to make the right choices again and again, but those are still the right choices to make whether we like it or not.

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I get that because of what society is like.

Society expects you to commute two hours a day. They expect you to go to lunch with co-workers. They expect you to shop at supermarkets, buy the food that you can afford and buy the food you advertise. If you don't do that, you're considered weird, or doing some special diet thing that's out of the ordinary. 

By comparison, it was FAR easier to eat healthy 100 years ago. There were no massive food conglomerates with massive advertising budgets, most food was reasonably local, most food was not particularly processed and what was processed was largely with preserves and the like. It was effortless to eat healthy, because you had to go out of your way to eat particularly unhealthily. It's not about people being supportive - it's about the society you live in.

No one forces your hand to fit into society's expectations. Society makes it easier for you to fit into its expectations than to stand out but you can still stand out. I don't give a rat's ass about people considering me weird.

I'm not really going to go back to this one after saying this - you can chose to wait for society to shift so that it suits your wishes to lose weight and eat healthy or you can start eating healthy, exercising and losing weight by doing what needs to be done. I'm not even buying that you'd be sticking out of society's norms by doing that. It's never been more socially acceptable to eat healthy and workout. It is difficult though and that's why most people don't stick with it.

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

Yep, blaming the people. Again, this doesn't work, and will continue not to work, and this is exactly the same argument made about people who get addicted. Just let them suffer and die, or they can dig themselves out. 

This doesn't work.

You can try to absolve the individual people from all the responsibility all you like, it won't make it true. As long as there are non-obese people in societies you claim do not support a lifestyle that's not leading to obesity, that argument does not stand.

10 hours ago, Kalbear said:

If you're saying that you are unwilling to support regulating the industries, treating it like an addiction, treating the issue like a societal issue and not just an individual one - then yes, you might as well be condemning them. If your only solution is 'be more responsible like I am' then you are defacto blaming them for where they are, saying that the reason that they are in this mess is because they are irresponsible (or as @Tywin et al. says, Lazy, stupid), and then yelling at them to get their act together.

And then you expect them to do this? 

How on earth do you think that's going to work?

Where am I saying that I'm not willing to support regulating the industries? I'm all for regulating the industries but I'm saying that it will take decades for that to work, like it did with tobacco and, to a lesser extent, alcohol. On the other hand, you are the one who gave up on generations of people who will suffer from obesity until that happens.

When it comes to addiction, the addict needs to commit to rehab, needs to want to get clean, needs to do what therapists prescribe etc. If there is be a support system in place then that's great and might be helpful but it's once again down to the individual to put in all the work to fight it and beat it.

I'm not blaming anyone, I'm saying there's an element of personal responsibility in the matter and there is.

10 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

Yes, I agree people are too hard on big Tobacco. The regulations that have been placed on industry these last fifty years are abominable. Let’s let them advertise their product that causes cancer on TV and magazines again.  Oh and frame their products as healthy.

Poor Big tobacco. Just because they sell products that gives people cancer they’re maligned so much here in the US. 

So what if they marketed/continue market tobacco to children? They’re doing it for money. They’re just doing their job by maximizing their profits at the expense of a few million lives here or there. 

Once again, for people who seem to either have difficulty understanding English or have a tendency to put words into people's mouths - tobacco/food/pharma/petroleum/etc. industry should be as heavily regulated as possible but that takes time and generations of people will suffer until that gives results.

Until that happens, individual people need to do whatever is up to them to help themselves. Seek therapy, go to a dietician (and stick to the diet plan they are prescribed), increase movement (whether it's walking, cycling, lifting weights or whatever).

I'm definitely not going to come back to this subject since my arguments seem to fall on deaf ears and I don't see the point of continuing.

[Week]

4 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Correlation is not causation.

Nevermind, no point in engaging further.

[Ormond]

5 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Correlation is not causation.

I am a psychology professor and it's very frustrating to me how that phrase has become a mantra for anyone who wants to reject a bit of correlational research they don't like.

Yup, a correlation by itself doesn't show causation. But it is completely intellectually dishonest to just dismiss someone else's interpretation of a correlation without coming up with your own alternative explanation. There are thousands of research questions that can't be studied by strict experimental research because of ethical or practical limitations. The connection between income and obesity is one of those. You cannot randomly assign some people to have lower incomes than others and then track their weight. Research on this issue has to be done by correlation. 

Do you have any evidence or even a plausible theory that would show that the causation in the relationship between income and obesity works in the opposite direction, or that it is a pure artifact resulting from some underlying third variable? If not, it is just intellectually dishonest to dismiss the research with a mindless "correlation is not causation" comment.

[Jo498]

Here is an obvious, admittedly somewhat nasty off-the-cuff hypothesis for a bunch of common causes: poor impulse control/lack of moderation/laziness/stupidity will likely lead to both obesity and poverty. (I don't want to commit to this thesis, only show that it is a very simple option for a common cause.)

No need to take this any further as it only shows that it is quite easy to come up with a common cause or other suggestions that casts doubts on the direct causal link, usually understood as poverty -> obesity.

 

[baxus]

14 hours ago, Week said:

So if you were to Google research on income and obesity rate there would be no correlation? (Spoiler: you didn't - obesity rates are much higher in low income and low education achievement cohorts.)

If we were to Google research on frequency of physical exercise and obesity rate would there be correlation?  

Just to point out that I'm not trying to negate the link between income and obesity rates. I do believe that poverty and obesity go hand in hand too often for the connection to be dismissed.

[Ormond]

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Here is an obvious, admittedly somewhat nasty off-the-cuff hypothesis for a bunch of common causes: poor impulse control/lack of moderation/laziness/stupidity will likely lead to both obesity and poverty. (I don't want to commit to this thesis, only show that it is a very simple option for a common cause.)

No need to take this any further as it only shows that it is quite easy to come up with a common cause or other suggestions that casts doubts on the direct causal link, usually understood as poverty -> obesity.

 

Anybody who understands the correlation between poverty and obesity as a "direct causal link" is a fool and I doubt if that is how it is "generally understood" by anyone posting on this thread. It's just that some think that the links of poverty with living in areas where healthy food is less available, access to recreational facilities is poorer, and the need to work more than 40 hours a week to financially survive at all (etc.) is more often the case to be just as strong or stronger explanations for the link as nasty ideas about personality correlations. 

[Isalie]

19 minutes ago, Ormond said:

Anybody who understands the correlation between poverty and obesity as a "direct causal link" is a fool and I doubt if that is how it is "generally understood" by anyone posting on this thread. It's just that some think that the links of poverty with living in areas where healthy food is less available, access to recreational facilities is poorer, and the need to work more than 40 hours a week to financially survive at all is more often the case to be just as strong or stronger explanations for the link as nasty ideas about personality correlations. 

Like i said upthread, none of these things are really an issue in Sweden and obesity is still a class issue.

[A wilding]

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Here is an obvious, admittedly somewhat nasty off-the-cuff hypothesis for a bunch of common causes: poor impulse control/lack of moderation/laziness/stupidity will likely lead to both obesity and poverty. (I don't want to commit to this thesis, only show that it is a very simple option for a common cause.)

No need to take this any further as it only shows that it is quite easy to come up with a common cause or other suggestions that casts doubts on the direct causal link, usually understood as poverty -> obesity.

 

Except that poverty is hereditary and locale based, which at the very least casts grave doubt on that hypothesis.

And yes, it is quite easy to come up with a cloud of hypotheses to explain away some inconvenient correlation, in order to confuse people and to persuade them into inaction. And it is done all the time.

 

[lokisnow]

10 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Correlation is not causation.

Stress releases cortisol, elevated cortisol levels lead to weight gain and or prevent weight loss. Poverty causes extremely high levels of constant stress. Obesogenic foods are cheap, engineered to short circuit the brains of consumers to induce over consumption, and are heavily subsidized by the government so they are consumed as a greater proportion of daily caloric load for those in poverty.

 

[lokisnow]

3 hours ago, Jo498 said:

Here is an obvious, admittedly somewhat nasty off-the-cuff hypothesis for a bunch of common causes: poor impulse control/lack of moderation/laziness/stupidity willl Likely lead to...

 

Poor impulse control, lack of moderation, laziness, stupidity will likely lead to an entry level salaried job with well above average pay in middle management, and all of these four qualities will be encouraged by superiors who will enthusiastically encourage all of them at office dinners, company retreats etc, and if one demonstrates enough adherence to these four principle values, one will be fast tracked to becoming an executive within a few years.

if you are white and male.

so I don’t see how these fairly universal attributes that are highly valued by many of the upper caste of American society would inevitably lead to poverty, just as often they lead to a lifetime of success.

i mean these four values are celebrated as the pinnacle of human achievement by the entire fraternity and sorority culture, and everyone in one of those exits “college” with a terrific job and a network of like minded people celebrating the same values.

of course every single one of them would fire a black employee in a heartbeat if that employee were late because it would be proof of how lazy and stupid the employee is. Of that employee had more than one drink at a company function it would be proof of how theat employee has a total lack of self control or sense of moderation and should probably be fired. And so on and so forth.

[Jo498]

I myself wrote already much earlier in the thread that greed and indulgence is a general feature of our culture.  Although I have no connection to them, I am certainly among the last ones to defend the US middle class culture. I also added that I don't want to defend the lazy fat poor thesis, only wanted to point out plausible common causes that would explain the correlation while rejecting poverty as a cause of obesity.

But you have a very restricted US centered perspective. Why do you guys have to turn everything into a race issue?

As Mikael points out above, there are hardly any racial issues, no food deserts and a rather generous welfare state (compared to the US) in Sweden and there is a poor/low economic status - obese correlation there as well. And Germany is closer to Sweden wrt these factors and also has the same correlation. It is far too general to be grounded in the specific pathologies of the US.

[Erik of Hazelfield]

If you think laziness, indulgence and greed are new phenomena then I suggest you read some history.

To me it's obvious that the thing that has changed in our society is not that people have grown more lazy or have less willpower than they used to. What's happened is that the food industry, just like all other industries, have become better at what they do. And what they do is making food, beverages, candy and snacks that sell well. No one had to resist the urge to buy a super mocha latte with extra chocolate cream in the 70s, because they weren't invented yet (or at least not sold widely). Soda cups were smaller, there was less added sugar in food, and hamburgers and fries came in smaller sizes. Also the video games were boring as fuck so kids had to go out and play basketball or something. 

What you have to realise about the free market economy is that it gives people what they want, not necessarily what's best for them. Now I get that it's patronising to impose regulations to save people from themselves, but really it shouldn't be that much of a deal. If we can have restrictions on how and where alcohol can be sold, or put a tax on cigarettes for health reasons, then I don't see why unhealthy food couldn't be regulated in similar ways.

[baxus]

17 hours ago, Ormond said:

Anybody who understands the correlation between poverty and obesity as a "direct causal link" is a fool and I doubt if that is how it is "generally understood" by anyone posting on this thread. It's just that some think that the links of poverty with living in areas where healthy food is less available, access to recreational facilities is poorer, and the need to work more than 40 hours a week to financially survive at all (etc.) is more often the case to be just as strong or stronger explanations for the link as nasty ideas about personality correlations. 

For the sake of argument, it needs to be pointed out that many middle and upper class people work more than 40 hours a week, too. It's not limited to lower class population. The difference being that it's for reasons other than basic survival, of course.

11 hours ago, Erik of Hazelfield said:

What you have to realise about the free market economy is that it gives people what they want, not necessarily what's best for them. Now I get that it's patronising to impose regulations to save people from themselves, but really it shouldn't be that much of a deal. If we can have restrictions on how and where alcohol can be sold, or put a tax on cigarettes for health reasons, then I don't see why unhealthy food couldn't be regulated in similar ways.

Bolded part is what I meant when I said that food industry is doing what it's supposed to do - make profit. Wish I'd phrased it like this.

I agree with you about restrictions, too. The tricky part might be that there's more of a grey area on what makes food healthy or not. For example, there are people who would claim red meat is healthy and others who would oppose such a claim. It's much more straightforward with alcohol and tobacco.

[Erik of Hazelfield]

Yes. That's why I propose to start with a soda tax. It's reasonably easy to define and it's extremely well researched, with tons of evidence, that sugar sweetened drinks are bad for you. If the dieticians can agree on anything, it would be that.