According to some sources, at least 1 in 8 of the world population is classified as ‘obese’. Since nobody in any government seems to have thought up a working solution, what do you believe can be done to solve the epidemic?
There’s no one single approach.
- Stop overincentivizing HFCS; as a sugar replacement, its main feature is suppressing natural hormones that tell you “I’m full, let’s stop eating”. It’s a corn product, which often makes it a very “American” thing to support.
- Design walkable communities. Many people can’t schedule out time to get exercise, but should get it regularly through their job or community.
- Make programs designed to promote home cooking, ensuring people have time in their day to do it, adequate kitchen space, and buy-in from their family or lifemates. Many people live off take-out or ready meals, which means they don’t know what goes into it, and also don’t socialize with family.
When my kids were younger we subscribed to a meal kit service. They would select from a limited menu, then we would get ingredients and instructions. It was great at teaching my kids how to cook. It was also much more efficient than trying to do the same from scratch: we already had the right amounts of all ingredients and simplified step by step. We saved time.
However it was expensive. I wonder if some sort of subsidized service like that would help people learn how to cook and develop the habit
Mounjaro to all.
The education system needs to be redeveloped from the ground up. It’s a 19th century system in the 21st century.
Physical Education needs to be prioritized as does social engagement.
Why does it need solving in the first place?
Because… it’s a disease that shortens people’s lifespans?
Aside from that, it’s also terrible for the environment.
Pay people to lose weight and then pay an even better rate for maintaining a healthy weight
give them all ozempic or GLP-1. almost every method, they want quick fixes, or dont want do dieting or exercising or they dont want to do it. glp-1 has a side benefit in helping with other addictions.
People on ozempic loose around 7 % of their bodyweight and gain it back when they stop. Not a great solution to a non existent problem.
Global food infrastructure collapse would do it
Well it would require a multi step and branching plan. Obvious you’d have to communicate your plan to other people to get them on board.
But obesity probably genetic. Like every human has the capacity to get obese if they have the processed food. You could edit their genes with crisper
Switch to Scientific Socialism where people aren’t overworked and in deep debt over shitty capitalism.
Whats the link? Stress, obviously.
Obesity was essentially nonexistent in Ukraine during the 1930’s and China during the 1950’s, before unscientific capitalism came along and screwed everything up
People were also severely stressed in the centuries past (remember, the 8 hour workday is a recent invention). Less stress helps for sure, but the availability of calorie-dense food engineered to be delicious is probably even worse.
Did they have long hours before industrial revolution though?
We can start by not eating highly processed, industrially made food-like substances.
This will be unpopular, but: just stop caring. Let people be whatever size, treat them equally, and don’t sweat it. You may not like that but one way to solve an issue is to realize there is no issue.
Would people be healthier if they weren’t obese? Possibly. The evidence is a little mixed. I’m in the middle where I think not being obese is healthier but the effect is overblown by related factors. People would be healthier if no one drank alcohol but I don’t think banning alcohol is worth it.
(Revealing my biases: I’ve been extremely fit, I’ve also been technically obese, and I’m on a GLP-1 inhibitor because I want to lose weight. But I’m not interested in telling other people how heavy they should be)
Bring on the downvotes, my body is ready.
Thanks for this sane comment.
As you’ve been both fit and technically obese, I suspect you also realize exercise is much harder to do when you’re obese. Not just because moving your body is harder, but because you have less energy and thus it might be much harder to motivate yourself. It’s a vicious cycle where gaining weight is even easier when sedentary and being obese makes it harder to not be sedentary.
And with socialized healthcare in most countries, everyone’s paying the price. I say this as someone currently technically obese as well.
Luckily most people don’t WANT to be obese, so GLP-1 inhibitors are a bit of a godsend. Forcing anyone to lose weight I can’t condone, but giving people the best possible chances to be healthy seems like a no-brainer.
Depends on if you wanna do it in a more ethical manner or not. One way you could do it, at least for some places with the resources necessary, is basically forcing tech companies to subtly change your algorithm to slowly push you to believe that you being obese is bad… or that it’s bad in general. Subtly make fatphobic content more accepted by you until you decide to try and change your habits to not be fat. Though, that could just as easily backfire and lead to a spike in suicide for people unable to do it, which is obviously bad.
Though, I think the better option ( at least in my country of the States ) is actual proper education on healthy eating and exercise combined with working on fixing the economy so people have more free time while also having a living wage and access to affordable healthcare.
Compared to this “releasing the wolves” is a better idea
This is an objectivly terrible idea and does not work like at all.
Get rid of BMI.
What would that solve?
Is BMI perfect? No. But most people who cite its shortcomings pretend that the edge cases like extremely muscular athletes have any relevance to most of the population.
It isn’t edge cases. The BMI tells you literally NOTHING about a persons health.
In the same way blood pressure tells you nothing about a person’s health, yes. In the same way a college degree tells you nothing about a person’s intelligence, or their number of active friendships indicates their social skills.
Just because something is itself meaningless does not mean it is not a broadly useful indicator. But no, the vast, vast majority of people with unhealthy BMIs are carrying very unhealthy amounts of fat. There are some edge cases involving athletes or people with extremely odd build types. And the precise level of where we define overweight or obese really should vary a bit from person to person.
But I’m sorry, 99% of people with a BMI of 35 have a serious weight problem. People just citing Olympic athletes and other fringe cases out of cope and denial. BMI is imperfect, but claiming it’s meaningless is just wishful magical thinking.
Theres a whole host of issues, many of which are already mentioned, but two other big ones are treating it more as a health issue rather than a moral one, and improving healthcare - especially mental health care.
People don’t realize, but a lot of obesity cases are tied into other health issues - especially mental health. This is doubly true for more extreme cases. For a very simple example, those who are neurodivergent often struggle with specific stimulations including food textures (limiting food options), especially in combination with food deserts or areas with little selection. On the other hand, this can often be improved or worked around with medication and/or therapy. Medication such as antidepressants or antipsychotics causing weight gain is another very common example, and while it isn’t as easy to avoid, better medical support can make it easier to manage, especially if you need to change diet as a result. For a more extreme example, trauma is very closely tied to weight gain and eating disorders. Watch any episode of My Six-Hundred Pound Life (or better yet, don’t), and you’ll notice that almost all of them have significant trauma. For example, childhood abuse can lead to difficulty self-regulating, or sexual abuse can cause someone to feel that being “”“ugly”“” will help prevent future assaults. These examples just scratch the surface too, and things only gen messier when you have comorbid conditions. Just imagine, for example, someone with OCD affecting how they eat, depression treated with a weight-gain causing medication, and PMOS (a hormonal issue common in women, which often makes it extremely difficult to lose weight). Doctors often ignore or struggle to treat any of these individually, nonetheless all three together, and thats before we open the conversation around affordability.
Given this, and just how sensitive and defensive humans are in general, that makes it all-the-more important that we treat people respectfully and kindly. Even ignoring basic decentcy, demonizing or mocking people for their weight delegitimises efforts to change systematic barriers, makes accessing care more difficult or unfriendly, often wastes time or confuses with “advice” that is unhelpful or outright destructive given the context of someone’s medical background (I.E. telling someone with an eating disorder to control their eating more), and increases stress, which in turn, makes medical issues worse and harder to cope with. Instead, if we treat it as a medical issue, we avoid all of this and stop moralising or hurting people already struggling.
I stopped eating animal products and lost 50 lbs, so that’s a start
Then meat being made largely unaffordable by the inflation crisis ought to bend the curve.
