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Comment by constantcrying | Hacker News Reader

But you are just saying that things are different because they are different. What happened in the last 70 years to make obesity a mass epidemic in the West?

It clearly wasn't the mere existence of unhealthy foods, the Japanese have tons of unhealthy food as well. You can get a burger there without any issue.

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US corporations managed to make food addicting by using science to formulate food in such a way as to trigger a massive spike in dopamine followed by a massive drop a short time later. Combining that with an individualistic culture that leaves many lonely and anxious, it’s no surprise that people depend on substances to make themselves feel better. The average american puts themselves to sleep with a 2 litre of cola, a bag of chips and a pint of ice cream while playing games on their cellphones way late.

If you saw a population of people injecting heroin into their veins and getting frail, would you say you have a frail ness epidemic? No. What you have now is a food addiction epidemic. You should treat it as you treat any other addiction.

Japan has the same foods available, by the same US corporations. Why are they seemingly immune to it?

>Combining that with an individualistic culture

So that is the only change since the 50s? Seems like a very weak explanation.

The US has already strongly reduced the use of a very addictive substance in the past by making it culturally unacceptable in the case of cigarettes. Japan has the same culture already with food, where there is strong cultural pressure to not abuse food. Perhaps it is time to bring back shame towards overeating?

The US has also seriously reduced the use of sugar over the last decades.

I agree that overeating should be shamed, but was that needed 70 years ago? To be honest I don't believe the cultural issue. Which percentage of US citizens believe that they should loose weight? Likely a very large proportion.

A hamburger isn't particularly unhealthy depending on what you put on it.

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