8 ms·

I'm still wondering why so many people are so much heavier now than they were fifty years ago and why instead of attempting to medicate our way out of the probl

I'm still wondering why so many people are so much heavier now than they were fifty years ago and why instead of attempting to medicate our way out of the problem we don't try to attack the actual cause.

kiba 2y ago
We're going to need to medicate our way of the problem while waiting for a public healthy policy that actually works. It's not like we didn't try, but what we tried didn't work and never really iterated toward something that works.
- tomcar288 2y ago
  It works for me. The secret is simple: Eat food, real food. the trick is to know what real food is (6 main food groups: Beans, whole grains, veg, fruits, nuts/seeds, tubers)
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > secret is simple: Eat food, real food This is modern voodoo. I’ve eaten terrifically and exercised regularly. I’ve also been a slob and ordered Uber Eats from bed for a week. I don’t gain much weight either way. When I have, I can lose it within a week. (My figure changes. But not enough that clothes don’t fit.) This isn’t because I follow some magic (ex post facto obvious in some way) diet. It’s my biology. Other people have different biologies that will save calories irrespective of the source and use; their basal metabolism adjusts to ensure they’re burning less than they eat, all the way to starvation. In a calorie-deficit environment, or one stricken by plague that disease out digestion while the immune system goes full blast, I die first. In a calorie-rich and vaccinated world, they do. (Even then, mortality is higher amid low BMIs than moderate ones, largely due to disease outcomes.)
    - jghn 2y ago
      Indeed. Around the time that Supersize Me came out I was looking to lose some weight. To prove a point to my friends I did this by going on a fast food diet. Unlike Spurlock, I actually tracked my calorie intake and this affected what I ordered. However, every meal came from one of McDs, BK, or Wendy's as there was one of each in my neighborhood. I did indeed lose the belly fat I wanted to shed. I'm sure it wasn't the healthiest thing I ever did, but from the perspective of fat loss it worked AOK
    - thefz 2y ago
      > t’s my biology. Other people have different biologies that will save calories irrespective of the source and use There is zero scientific evidence about this.
  - kiba 2y ago
    I have eaten real food for weeks and yet fast food come back with a vengeance.
  - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
    Ignoring the fact that half of those are the same things, science has proven beyond any doubt that a high variety diet of animal and plant-based foods, at a caloric deficit, is best for the body. Choosing one or the other is slowly killing yourself by removing important vitamins and nutrients from your diet.
- tourmalinetaco 2y ago
  The reason nothing has worked is because food companies, who pay out massively to regulators, rewire our basic desires to make us buy more of their sugary slop. And now, we have medical companies, who also pay out heavily, trying to cash in even more. I highly suggest reading “ Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us“ by Michael Moss, and “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite” by David A. Kessler, former head of the FDA.
  - thefz 2y ago
    Replace obesity with smoking as a simple exercise to understand how absurd these takes sound. "It's not that I don't want to stop smoking, but the cigarette companies put chemicals in that keep me addicted" "I live in an environment that pushes me to smoke" "I wish the policymakers would stop me from smoking" "I smoke because my genes tell me so"
    - kiba 2y ago
      Life is more complicated than a simple of binary of having responsibility and not having responsibility for a certain affliction such as smoking addiction. Often it's a varying mixture of both. We should be working to pragmatically solve problems, not playing unhelpful blame game. Doctors don't go around trying to make sure that their patients are first virtuous in their self care. They get on with the business of medicine and do their best. We now have a powerful drug that help with obesity. Let's make use of that when nothing else accomplish the job as we work on other alternatives such as better regulations, psychological health, etc.
    - saagarjha 2y ago
      This is actually how we tackle smoking in a large part. There's a lot of regulation on smoking!
    - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
      I’m sorry, what is even your point? Are you trying to claim that obesity is not a problem caused by megacorps by pointing to a health problem that was and is caused by megacorps? Are you trying to say that cigarettes don’t actively contain an addiction chemical, namely nicotine? I actually have had people claim this, as they were tricked by cigarette companies, so it wouldn’t shock me if you thought something so stupid.
Aaronstotle 2y ago
I am going to guess that its a combination of the prevalence of ultra-processed foods coupled with a steep decline in physical activity.
mensetmanusman 2y ago
Activity levels have collapsed. You can save yourself years of extra health-span standing in any way more than sitting. Turns out knowledge work is just as dangerous as physical work, you just die in a different way and the coffin is larger.
- naveen99 2y ago
  But life expectancy is higher now with knowledge work and lower activity levels.
  - yurishimo 2y ago
    Because we can all afford to go to the doctor regularly. If treated early, you can live with type 2 diabetes and other obesity related diseases for decades.
  - Jtsummers 2y ago
    This exists in a system. We have obesity (caused by several factors, diet and activity levels of course and then the factors into those) along with improved medical care. It's like inflating a balloon with a slow leak. The medical care is propping up our life expectancy numbers while our individual behavior is bringing it down. It'll level out or decline at some point as our obese population continues to become a larger percentage and medical improvements stop happening so regularly.
  - chucksmash 2y ago
    There's been an approx 80% decline in US infant mortality from 1963 to 2023 according to [0]. I know when comparing against pre-industrial society this is a big driver of increased life expectancy. There's another metric that adjusts for this that only looks at the life expectancy of individuals who survive to the age of (iirc) 15, but I don't have time to look it up right now. Perhaps comparing the change in that versus the one that includes the drop in infant mortality would be interesting though. [0]: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/infant-mortality-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...
  - 2y ago
groby_b 2y ago
Because we don't know why. We have many suspects, but no concrete evidence for any of those, and in many cases, not even clear mitigations. (Let's pretend for a moment it's e.g. all about PFAS, what do you actually do about them? And what do you do once there's the inevitable political outcry that it's just spoilsports from the other side trying to ruin your life?) And so we medicate, because that's the only thing where people can say "my neighbor did it, and look, it worked for them, I'll do it too".
- logicchains 2y ago
  We know exactly why; the average American dietary caloric intake has increased to three thousand and something, which is more than the average person burns, especially if the person is as sedentary as the average American. More calories eaten + less exercise = more weight gained.
  - phkahler 2y ago
    This is the technically correct answer and we should try to address it from both ends - eating fewer calories AND being more active. There are a number of issues with "just eat less" because there are reasons people eat more than they should. Part of that is what they eat (what you eat matters for multiple reasons) and also habits or other psychological reasons.
- rrr_oh_man 2y ago
  > Because we don't know why. Really? It’s Calories In - Calories Out.
  - otabdeveloper4 2y ago
    Not really. Diesel fuel technically has several times as much calories as Cola-Cola. But try drinking diesel fuel for lunch and see what comes about. This is because the human body doesn't literally burn food like in a calorimeter. Digestion is a very complex chemical reaction with lots of nuance and different nutrient pathways.
Jtsummers 2y ago
Our diets have gotten worse and we've become even more sedentary. Why don't we attack that? Because 30+ years of evening news clips showing obese people walking or sitting and handwringing about the obesity crisis have done nothing, and that seems to be the extent of our ability to act.
cma 2y ago
Fifty years ago there were like 3-5 TV channels in rural America, no smartphones, and a good bit less automation in rural work. That may have made it more physically involved, and there was a higher proportion of people living rurally vs cities than now too.
tomcar288 2y ago
what i find fascinating is, you'll see soooo many advertisements about various medications for so many illnesses, all of which are under the umbrella of metabolic syndrome. and then in the background, you'll see people consuming ice cream and pizza, etc. these ads aren't randomly constructed. every short scene is designed to communicate a certain message.
bendigedig 2y ago
Neoliberalism is allergic to addressing most root causes.
RobRivera 2y ago
You'd be surprise how much dietary choices and options impact this in America. Go to Europe and eat home cooked meals there. Your health will improve
- dboreham 2y ago
  Go to Europe where there's public transportation.
- yurishimo 2y ago
  As someone who moved to Europe and also lost quite a bit of weight, the bigger factor was eating out is hella more expensive here. Junk food is also more expensive though still relatively cheap, at least in the Netherlands. But yea, the EU does a lot better job policing what goes into food and it shows. Fruits and vegetables and meat that I buy here spoil within 2-4 days (and 4 is pushing it)! I had to adjust my purchasing habits because it would go bad before I could eat it all. The public transportation and push to cycle and walk definitely helps, but at least where I live in the south, most families still own at least one car. The difference is that they only use it to drive to work and for trips. Any errands are done on foot or on a bicycle.
toomuchtodo 2y ago
Corn subsidies, and what ag subsidies incentivize in general. There is no lobby for a healthy diet, or providing subsidies for it.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
aantix 2y ago
There’s been no shortage of proposed solutions and education. Weight loss is apparently a 90 billion dollar industry. It’s just that the long term weight loss outcomes are still abysmal. New approaches are gladly welcomed.
- yurishimo 2y ago
  Because we’re genetically engineered to crave stuff that is awful for our bodies in high amounts. Finding sugar in the wild meant foraging for berries for hours or fighting bees for honey. Now you can buy it at the supermarket cheaper than a head of lettuce.
  - aantix 2y ago
    So.. the problem and solution is capitalism? :)
iskander 2y ago
>we don't try to attack the actual cause It's cars and large houses peripherally connected to amenities by car-only infrastructure. People love this lifestyle and will fight you very energetically if you try to do anything to nudge city layouts towards the previous level of walkability.
- mysterydip 2y ago
  > fight you very energetically Until they run out of breath, anyway.
- tonetegeatinst 2y ago
  While the biking/walkable city is a nice concept, it ignores how it is incompatible with certain lifestyles and hobbies. Anyone into machining, high powered rocketry, or shooting or hunting. YMMV but I doubt you could have a magazine and pass inspection from the BATFE or your state inspection for fireworks or explosives. And dense living near a gun range is impossible unless you got money to build a long range that can catch any stray rounds, when done in a rural area this is done using natural land and hills or building dirt mounds, which a walkable city would not have.
  - jeffbee 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - magicpin 2y ago
    You’re saying this as an either or. Why does everyone need to live a rural area with access to a gun range? Vice versa just because we build more walkable infrastructure doesn’t mean literally everyone everywhere is suddenly walking 15 minutes to work.
    - kiba 2y ago
      Most people doesn't live in such rural area anyway. Machining can be done at a makerspace or you could rent space for your workshop.
jackcosgrove 2y ago
There are many causes, one of which that hasn't been mentioned already is the decline in smoking. I'm not saying we start smoking to lose weight, but it does suppress appetite. Now we have FDA approved medications that can do that.
ProfessorLayton 2y ago
People may be heavier than 50y ago, but people are also taller than they were half a century ago. "...the average height of a man aged 20-74 years increased from just over 5-8 in 1960 to 5-9 ½ in 2002" [1]. Despite the higher weight, life expectancy has increased too [2]. I'm not trying to handwave obesity rates, but pointing out that it's a mixed narrative. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/americans.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/americans.htm [2] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1145.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...
- QuercusMax 2y ago
  My parents had 4 boys, two of them in the early 70s and two in the early 80s. Our heights are, in order, from oldest to youngest: * 5' 7", same as our father * 5' 9" * 5' 11" * 6' Now obviously the sample size is quite small, but we've always wondered if nutrition had something to do with it.
  - relaxing 2y ago
    Nutrition is correlated with childhood growth. Was there a reason why how much they were fed would have changed with each individual, but not across the entire cohort?
adonese 2y ago
You are not alone in this. https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-part-i-mysteries/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p... This series of blog posts goes through various theories (and myths) regarding obesity.
- gruez 2y ago
  A rebuttal to that piece: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-probably-not-lithium https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba... Their thesis doesn't hinge entirely on lithium, but their sloppy work and responses to the rebuttal mean people should take their work with a huge grain of salt.
teaearlgraycold 2y ago
Eating healthy, in the appropriate amounts, and exercising daily is the solution - obviously. Moving the mountains necessary to change America's average diet and lifestyle is much harder than giving out a drug. I agree that the drug isn't the "right" solution. But I'll take a half measure over what we've been getting.
keybored 2y ago
So are you wondering? Or you do know the "actual cause"?
- kwhitefoot 2y ago
  The proximate cause is obvious: more calories consumed than are necessary to maintain weight. I do understand that the causes of over eating are not necessarily so simple. What I wonder about is that essentially no government has an explicit policy to combat this despite its obvious negative consequences.
  - keybored 2y ago
    More calories means more money being spent. More obesity means more money is spent on all kinds of ways to get rid of the calories. It’s good for the economy. That’s the answer.
andrewla 2y ago
I believe Yudkowsky has put forth a theory that somewhere in our environment there is a "GLP Supercharger" that's causing the opposite effect of the GLP-1 agonists. If a lizard bite can make you thinner, maybe there's a metaphorical lizard bite that's making us fatter.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  Some people get fat just looking at food, and this may get worse with age. Slow metabolisms, bad genes can play a role. This does not necessarily explain rising rates of obesity over time, but it can explain how some people become obese so easily despite not eating that much or why obesity is so hard to treat or the high failure rates of dieting.
tuatoru 2y ago
My step-grandson has taken up boxing at the age of 15. He has lost five percent of his body mass simply by ceasing to drink soft drinks ("pop", in some parts of the USA). Drink water or black tea or coffee.
ams92 2y ago
People aren’t eating the right foods and not exercising enough. The cause is very simple, the solution is not. It’s hard to get millions of people to make lifestyle changes and that’s even assuming they have access to healthier food in the first place.
OptionOfT 2y ago
Our food is no longer made by people. It is made by companies who make money taking the cheapest ingredients, reconstituting and selling it as 'food'. I recommend reading this book https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind-Food/dp/1324036729 https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind... (or the audiobook) to learn what makes our 'food' so much worse than 50 years ago. If you want something more moving, this is good documentary by the same the doctor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk
thefz 2y ago
> why instead of attempting to medicate our way out of the problem we don't try to attack the actual cause Have you noticed that every time this discussion comes up in this forum, simple personal intervention is glossed over as a solution? Causes for obesity, for HN users, are: - The Environment - The Lack of Walkable Cities - The Policymakers™ - Too Many Cars - The Government Lobbied By Food Corps et cetera. While none of the above has directly put calories into a person's mouth, and the only responsibility is on the mouth owner, we sometimes forget that the simple solution to the obesity crisis is: caloric restriction. This solution however has a major drawback: it requires being slightly uncomfortable for a tiny amount of time, which is unacceptable to most. So, enter the Magic Pill: No effort is required whatsoever, and we can keep on blaming external factors for what enters our mouth.
- belZaah 2y ago
  Oh were it that easy. While, absolutely, you could not gain weight with a calorie deficit, a targeted calorie deficit alone is not a direct path to loosing weight. If what you eat goes straight to fat (sugar, highly processed foods etc), you’ll still be lacking immediately available sugars to fuel your day. Cue your body slowing down the metabolism while resisting using the fat reserves. What you say is true (and, per personal experience, even the discomfort might not be there) only if the food eaten is of high quality and varied.
  - bradlys 2y ago
    Please don’t speak pseudoscience. Your body doesn’t violate the laws of thermodynamics. Your argumentation is saying if you stop eating you wont lose weight - which is blatantly false. No one dies of starvation being fat. It’s that simple. You wanna lose weight? Stop eating and drink water. You’ll lose the weight regardless of what nonsense you believe.
timbo1642 2y ago
[dead]

kiba 2y ago

We're going to need to medicate our way of the problem while waiting for a public healthy policy that actually works. It's not like we didn't try, but what we tried didn't work and never really iterated toward something that works.

tomcar288 2y ago
It works for me. The secret is simple: Eat food, real food. the trick is to know what real food is (6 main food groups: Beans, whole grains, veg, fruits, nuts/seeds, tubers)
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > secret is simple: Eat food, real food This is modern voodoo. I’ve eaten terrifically and exercised regularly. I’ve also been a slob and ordered Uber Eats from bed for a week. I don’t gain much weight either way. When I have, I can lose it within a week. (My figure changes. But not enough that clothes don’t fit.) This isn’t because I follow some magic (ex post facto obvious in some way) diet. It’s my biology. Other people have different biologies that will save calories irrespective of the source and use; their basal metabolism adjusts to ensure they’re burning less than they eat, all the way to starvation. In a calorie-deficit environment, or one stricken by plague that disease out digestion while the immune system goes full blast, I die first. In a calorie-rich and vaccinated world, they do. (Even then, mortality is higher amid low BMIs than moderate ones, largely due to disease outcomes.)
  - jghn 2y ago
    Indeed. Around the time that Supersize Me came out I was looking to lose some weight. To prove a point to my friends I did this by going on a fast food diet. Unlike Spurlock, I actually tracked my calorie intake and this affected what I ordered. However, every meal came from one of McDs, BK, or Wendy's as there was one of each in my neighborhood. I did indeed lose the belly fat I wanted to shed. I'm sure it wasn't the healthiest thing I ever did, but from the perspective of fat loss it worked AOK
  - thefz 2y ago
    > t’s my biology. Other people have different biologies that will save calories irrespective of the source and use There is zero scientific evidence about this.
- kiba 2y ago
  I have eaten real food for weeks and yet fast food come back with a vengeance.
- tourmalinetaco 2y ago
  Ignoring the fact that half of those are the same things, science has proven beyond any doubt that a high variety diet of animal and plant-based foods, at a caloric deficit, is best for the body. Choosing one or the other is slowly killing yourself by removing important vitamins and nutrients from your diet.
tourmalinetaco 2y ago
The reason nothing has worked is because food companies, who pay out massively to regulators, rewire our basic desires to make us buy more of their sugary slop. And now, we have medical companies, who also pay out heavily, trying to cash in even more. I highly suggest reading “ Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us“ by Michael Moss, and “The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite” by David A. Kessler, former head of the FDA.
- thefz 2y ago
  Replace obesity with smoking as a simple exercise to understand how absurd these takes sound. "It's not that I don't want to stop smoking, but the cigarette companies put chemicals in that keep me addicted" "I live in an environment that pushes me to smoke" "I wish the policymakers would stop me from smoking" "I smoke because my genes tell me so"
  - kiba 2y ago
    Life is more complicated than a simple of binary of having responsibility and not having responsibility for a certain affliction such as smoking addiction. Often it's a varying mixture of both. We should be working to pragmatically solve problems, not playing unhelpful blame game. Doctors don't go around trying to make sure that their patients are first virtuous in their self care. They get on with the business of medicine and do their best. We now have a powerful drug that help with obesity. Let's make use of that when nothing else accomplish the job as we work on other alternatives such as better regulations, psychological health, etc.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    This is actually how we tackle smoking in a large part. There's a lot of regulation on smoking!
  - tourmalinetaco 2y ago
    I’m sorry, what is even your point? Are you trying to claim that obesity is not a problem caused by megacorps by pointing to a health problem that was and is caused by megacorps? Are you trying to say that cigarettes don’t actively contain an addiction chemical, namely nicotine? I actually have had people claim this, as they were tricked by cigarette companies, so it wouldn’t shock me if you thought something so stupid.

Aaronstotle 2y ago

I am going to guess that its a combination of the prevalence of ultra-processed foods coupled with a steep decline in physical activity.

mensetmanusman 2y ago

Activity levels have collapsed. You can save yourself years of extra health-span standing in any way more than sitting. Turns out knowledge work is just as dangerous as physical work, you just die in a different way and the coffin is larger.

naveen99 2y ago
But life expectancy is higher now with knowledge work and lower activity levels.
- yurishimo 2y ago
  Because we can all afford to go to the doctor regularly. If treated early, you can live with type 2 diabetes and other obesity related diseases for decades.
- Jtsummers 2y ago
  This exists in a system. We have obesity (caused by several factors, diet and activity levels of course and then the factors into those) along with improved medical care. It's like inflating a balloon with a slow leak. The medical care is propping up our life expectancy numbers while our individual behavior is bringing it down. It'll level out or decline at some point as our obese population continues to become a larger percentage and medical improvements stop happening so regularly.
- chucksmash 2y ago
  There's been an approx 80% decline in US infant mortality from 1963 to 2023 according to [0]. I know when comparing against pre-industrial society this is a big driver of increased life expectancy. There's another metric that adjusts for this that only looks at the life expectancy of individuals who survive to the age of (iirc) 15, but I don't have time to look it up right now. Perhaps comparing the change in that versus the one that includes the drop in infant mortality would be interesting though. [0]: https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/united-states/infant-mortality-rate https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/USA/uni...
- 2y ago

groby_b 2y ago

Because we don't know why. We have many suspects, but no concrete evidence for any of those, and in many cases, not even clear mitigations. (Let's pretend for a moment it's e.g. all about PFAS, what do you actually do about them? And what do you do once there's the inevitable political outcry that it's just spoilsports from the other side trying to ruin your life?) And so we medicate, because that's the only thing where people can say "my neighbor did it, and look, it worked for them, I'll do it too".

logicchains 2y ago
We know exactly why; the average American dietary caloric intake has increased to three thousand and something, which is more than the average person burns, especially if the person is as sedentary as the average American. More calories eaten + less exercise = more weight gained.
- phkahler 2y ago
  This is the technically correct answer and we should try to address it from both ends - eating fewer calories AND being more active. There are a number of issues with "just eat less" because there are reasons people eat more than they should. Part of that is what they eat (what you eat matters for multiple reasons) and also habits or other psychological reasons.
rrr_oh_man 2y ago
> Because we don't know why. Really? It’s Calories In - Calories Out.
- otabdeveloper4 2y ago
  Not really. Diesel fuel technically has several times as much calories as Cola-Cola. But try drinking diesel fuel for lunch and see what comes about. This is because the human body doesn't literally burn food like in a calorimeter. Digestion is a very complex chemical reaction with lots of nuance and different nutrient pathways.

Jtsummers 2y ago

Our diets have gotten worse and we've become even more sedentary. Why don't we attack that? Because 30+ years of evening news clips showing obese people walking or sitting and handwringing about the obesity crisis have done nothing, and that seems to be the extent of our ability to act.

cma 2y ago

Fifty years ago there were like 3-5 TV channels in rural America, no smartphones, and a good bit less automation in rural work. That may have made it more physically involved, and there was a higher proportion of people living rurally vs cities than now too.

tomcar288 2y ago

what i find fascinating is, you'll see soooo many advertisements about various medications for so many illnesses, all of which are under the umbrella of metabolic syndrome. and then in the background, you'll see people consuming ice cream and pizza, etc. these ads aren't randomly constructed. every short scene is designed to communicate a certain message.

bendigedig 2y ago

Neoliberalism is allergic to addressing most root causes.

RobRivera 2y ago

You'd be surprise how much dietary choices and options impact this in America. Go to Europe and eat home cooked meals there. Your health will improve

dboreham 2y ago
Go to Europe where there's public transportation.
yurishimo 2y ago
As someone who moved to Europe and also lost quite a bit of weight, the bigger factor was eating out is hella more expensive here. Junk food is also more expensive though still relatively cheap, at least in the Netherlands. But yea, the EU does a lot better job policing what goes into food and it shows. Fruits and vegetables and meat that I buy here spoil within 2-4 days (and 4 is pushing it)! I had to adjust my purchasing habits because it would go bad before I could eat it all. The public transportation and push to cycle and walk definitely helps, but at least where I live in the south, most families still own at least one car. The difference is that they only use it to drive to work and for trips. Any errands are done on foot or on a bicycle.

toomuchtodo 2y ago

Corn subsidies, and what ag subsidies incentivize in general. There is no lobby for a healthy diet, or providing subsidies for it.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

aantix 2y ago

There’s been no shortage of proposed solutions and education. Weight loss is apparently a 90 billion dollar industry. It’s just that the long term weight loss outcomes are still abysmal. New approaches are gladly welcomed.

yurishimo 2y ago
Because we’re genetically engineered to crave stuff that is awful for our bodies in high amounts. Finding sugar in the wild meant foraging for berries for hours or fighting bees for honey. Now you can buy it at the supermarket cheaper than a head of lettuce.
- aantix 2y ago
  So.. the problem and solution is capitalism? :)

iskander 2y ago

>we don't try to attack the actual cause It's cars and large houses peripherally connected to amenities by car-only infrastructure. People love this lifestyle and will fight you very energetically if you try to do anything to nudge city layouts towards the previous level of walkability.

mysterydip 2y ago
> fight you very energetically Until they run out of breath, anyway.
tonetegeatinst 2y ago
While the biking/walkable city is a nice concept, it ignores how it is incompatible with certain lifestyles and hobbies. Anyone into machining, high powered rocketry, or shooting or hunting. YMMV but I doubt you could have a magazine and pass inspection from the BATFE or your state inspection for fireworks or explosives. And dense living near a gun range is impossible unless you got money to build a long range that can catch any stray rounds, when done in a rural area this is done using natural land and hills or building dirt mounds, which a walkable city would not have.
- jeffbee 2y ago
  [flagged]
- magicpin 2y ago
  You’re saying this as an either or. Why does everyone need to live a rural area with access to a gun range? Vice versa just because we build more walkable infrastructure doesn’t mean literally everyone everywhere is suddenly walking 15 minutes to work.
  - kiba 2y ago
    Most people doesn't live in such rural area anyway. Machining can be done at a makerspace or you could rent space for your workshop.

jackcosgrove 2y ago

There are many causes, one of which that hasn't been mentioned already is the decline in smoking. I'm not saying we start smoking to lose weight, but it does suppress appetite. Now we have FDA approved medications that can do that.

ProfessorLayton 2y ago

People may be heavier than 50y ago, but people are also taller than they were half a century ago. "...the average height of a man aged 20-74 years increased from just over 5-8 in 1960 to 5-9 ½ in 2002" [1]. Despite the higher weight, life expectancy has increased too [2]. I'm not trying to handwave obesity rates, but pointing out that it's a mixed narrative. [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/americans.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/04news/americans.htm [2] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2020/demo/p25-1145.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publicatio...

QuercusMax 2y ago
My parents had 4 boys, two of them in the early 70s and two in the early 80s. Our heights are, in order, from oldest to youngest: * 5' 7", same as our father * 5' 9" * 5' 11" * 6' Now obviously the sample size is quite small, but we've always wondered if nutrition had something to do with it.
- relaxing 2y ago
  Nutrition is correlated with childhood growth. Was there a reason why how much they were fed would have changed with each individual, but not across the entire cohort?

adonese 2y ago

You are not alone in this. https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-part-i-mysteries/ https://slimemoldtimemold.com/2021/07/07/a-chemical-hunger-p... This series of blog posts goes through various theories (and myths) regarding obesity.

gruez 2y ago
A rebuttal to that piece: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-probably-not-lithium https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/7iAABhWpcGeP5e6SB/it-s-proba... Their thesis doesn't hinge entirely on lithium, but their sloppy work and responses to the rebuttal mean people should take their work with a huge grain of salt.

teaearlgraycold 2y ago

Eating healthy, in the appropriate amounts, and exercising daily is the solution - obviously. Moving the mountains necessary to change America's average diet and lifestyle is much harder than giving out a drug. I agree that the drug isn't the "right" solution. But I'll take a half measure over what we've been getting.

keybored 2y ago

So are you wondering? Or you do know the "actual cause"?

kwhitefoot 2y ago
The proximate cause is obvious: more calories consumed than are necessary to maintain weight. I do understand that the causes of over eating are not necessarily so simple. What I wonder about is that essentially no government has an explicit policy to combat this despite its obvious negative consequences.
- keybored 2y ago
  More calories means more money being spent. More obesity means more money is spent on all kinds of ways to get rid of the calories. It’s good for the economy. That’s the answer.

andrewla 2y ago

I believe Yudkowsky has put forth a theory that somewhere in our environment there is a "GLP Supercharger" that's causing the opposite effect of the GLP-1 agonists. If a lizard bite can make you thinner, maybe there's a metaphorical lizard bite that's making us fatter.

paulpauper 2y ago
Some people get fat just looking at food, and this may get worse with age. Slow metabolisms, bad genes can play a role. This does not necessarily explain rising rates of obesity over time, but it can explain how some people become obese so easily despite not eating that much or why obesity is so hard to treat or the high failure rates of dieting.

tuatoru 2y ago

My step-grandson has taken up boxing at the age of 15. He has lost five percent of his body mass simply by ceasing to drink soft drinks ("pop", in some parts of the USA). Drink water or black tea or coffee.

ams92 2y ago

People aren’t eating the right foods and not exercising enough. The cause is very simple, the solution is not. It’s hard to get millions of people to make lifestyle changes and that’s even assuming they have access to healthier food in the first place.

OptionOfT 2y ago

Our food is no longer made by people. It is made by companies who make money taking the cheapest ingredients, reconstituting and selling it as 'food'. I recommend reading this book https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind-Food/dp/1324036729 https://www.amazon.com/Ultra-Processed-People-Science-Behind... (or the audiobook) to learn what makes our 'food' so much worse than 50 years ago. If you want something more moving, this is good documentary by the same the doctor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QOTBreQaIk

thefz 2y ago

> why instead of attempting to medicate our way out of the problem we don't try to attack the actual cause Have you noticed that every time this discussion comes up in this forum, simple personal intervention is glossed over as a solution? Causes for obesity, for HN users, are: - The Environment - The Lack of Walkable Cities - The Policymakers™ - Too Many Cars - The Government Lobbied By Food Corps et cetera. While none of the above has directly put calories into a person's mouth, and the only responsibility is on the mouth owner, we sometimes forget that the simple solution to the obesity crisis is: caloric restriction. This solution however has a major drawback: it requires being slightly uncomfortable for a tiny amount of time, which is unacceptable to most. So, enter the Magic Pill: No effort is required whatsoever, and we can keep on blaming external factors for what enters our mouth.

belZaah 2y ago
Oh were it that easy. While, absolutely, you could not gain weight with a calorie deficit, a targeted calorie deficit alone is not a direct path to loosing weight. If what you eat goes straight to fat (sugar, highly processed foods etc), you’ll still be lacking immediately available sugars to fuel your day. Cue your body slowing down the metabolism while resisting using the fat reserves. What you say is true (and, per personal experience, even the discomfort might not be there) only if the food eaten is of high quality and varied.
- bradlys 2y ago
  Please don’t speak pseudoscience. Your body doesn’t violate the laws of thermodynamics. Your argumentation is saying if you stop eating you wont lose weight - which is blatantly false. No one dies of starvation being fat. It’s that simple. You wanna lose weight? Stop eating and drink water. You’ll lose the weight regardless of what nonsense you believe.

timbo1642 2y ago

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