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Our Big Problem

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10 pointsvrikhter16 comments

Obesity is a complex problem and blah blah blah insert standard disclaimers here, but I think there are two things that, combined, contribute significantly to the problem:

1. Food is cheap

2. Most people enjoy eating food

Solutions include: Make food more expensive (tax it) or alter peoples' sense of hunger. The latter is actually not infeasible. There are drugs that decrease appetite.

Another idea takes some explaining: I think obesity has quite a bit in common with smoking. The biggest difference is that people need food to survive. Still, the solution to decreasing smoking could work on obesity. Smoking used to be quite popular, but today it isn't nearly as socially acceptable. In most places in the US, cigarrettes are taxed in both currency and social cost. Jokes at a smoker's expense are acceptable. It's not uncommon for friends or coworkers of smokers to suggest they quit.

The same is not true for obesity. Mocking fat people is considered rude. Suggesting they cut down on certain foods is also a delicate matter. An excuse for this taboo is that many fat people can't help it. They were born with genes that caused their metabolisms to run slower, or they feel hunger more strongly than average. But the same is true for many smokers. Their genes make them more susceptible to nicotine, or cause them to feel cravings more strongly than average. Yet we allow poking fun at smokers.

So while this suggestion won't be popular, I think it would be effective: Society needs to treat fatties more like smokers. If you see an overweight person doing something that will most likely increase their weight, picture them as they will be in 20 years: dying from diabetes and heart disease. Vision failing, fingers and toes pale from poor circulation. Possibly even missing a few digits. A premature death; an under-lived life, lacking many experiences healthy people take for granted. They never went rock climbing or surfing. Their extra weight causes them frequent back and joint pain. Think of all that suffering, and think of how you have an opportunity to prevent it. You probably won't be thanked for it, but you might very well save someone's life.

(I'm only half-joking in that last paragraph.)

Actually, the last paragraph is a good idea for another reason. For now, all the costs of obesity are internal costs paid for solely by the obese person. It's like me buying video games - I pay, I get the game, no one besides me and GameStop has a reason to care.

However, as of 2014, the costs of obesity become external costs - that is, costs paid for by all. It's more like a factory polluting - the obese person gets all the benefits of their activity, but impose costs on the rest of society. We should try to internalize those costs with an added tax (much like pollution taxes).

As long as they have some form of health insurance it's an external cost even today. Except it's spread among those who have the same insurance company rather than the whole taxpaying population.

Also even if they are completely uninsured it's still an external cost as chances are they'll end up at the hospital emergency room at some point, and being uninsured, the bill will end up with the taxpayers one way or the other. So really the internal vs external thing won't change much.

That being said I'm not as such against selective taxing of foods.

If the obese are paying their actuarial cost, then it's not an externality. So in any state where it is legal to charge the obese a higher premium, the obese are already paying their fair share.

Hmmm. A a pretty trite observation (obesity is on the increase), a lot of ranting about tangential issues like the splitering of the family unit and some half-hearted genuflection in the direction of possible solutions. Oh, and the country, or possibly the world, has gone to the dogs.

Yawn.

The usual case is that people cannot distinguish between the bodily feelings under a mild stress and the feeling of hunger. So, they eat to become calmer, while actually they don't need additional calories this time.

btw, most of word's religions praise the fasting as the method to improve self-control and health.

Just to mess this up further, there are some recent studies into ego depletion (basically willpower failures) which indicate that low blood sugar can make self-control more difficult, as the brain's executive function doesn't work that well when it has less chemical energy.

The obvious corollary would be that dieting that allows blood sugar to drop too low is going to make it harder to avoid binge eating lapses. Would it work the other way too, so that successful exercise of self-control while fasting adapts the brain to maintain good executive function even when low on glucose?

Go running after dinner. I assure you that one will not overeat the second time.

Ironically, the things least likely to make one throw up if you exercise right after eating them are the sorts of foods one should generally avoid if at all worried about obesity...

I thought that was the joke: If you eat much before running, you will feel terrible and likely vomit during the run. The second time, you'll learn to not eat as much beforehand.

I usually don't eat about 4 hours prior to running. That means running before breakfast or before dinner.

Yeah, that was how I understood the joke too. What I found ironic is that if I wanted to eat during vigourous exercise, or straight before, it'd be your basic loads-of-carbs-in-easy-to-digest-form kind of deal: the exact kind of thing I'd shun if I was trying to lose weight.

That was solved centuries ago - take a look what Indian people are eating - lentil soups (daal) and various kinds of a whole grain plain breads (just wheat and water).

Most cultures have healthy foods which do not cause obesity, India is hardly alone in this. The problem is that as a society gets richer, people may lean towards eating the fattier foods.

In the US, we switched from rice and beans to double baconburgers. India may switch from Palak Dal to Dal Mahkni, which is not much better.

Once again linking to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

Lustig argues that fructose/HFC/everything-not-glucose messes with our internal sensors to determine whether we've got enough or if we still need a tad more power. As a result we eat too much.

Edit: Aw, hit reply instead of making my own post.

There's still time - you can copy your comment, delete, and re-insert as a new comment. If you know how to edit, you should know how to do that.

Here is a good back and forth with Lustig and why his science could be suspect.

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/01/29/the-bitter-truth-ab...

http://www.alanaragonblog.com/2010/02/19/a-retrospective-of-...

There is no secret why people are fat. People are doing less exercise wise and eating more crap food wise. Trying to blame it on one trigger such as HFCS is clearly ignoring the big picture.

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