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Comment by undefined1 | Hacker News Reader

more than 40% of US adults are obese and >18% of children. why we don't tackle that with urgency is beyond me, considering it's one of the main preventable health problems we have. and getting worse.

"From 1999–2000 through 2017–2018, the prevalence of obesity increased from 30.5% to 42.4%, and the prevalence of severe obesity increased from 4.7% to 9.2%.

The estimated annual medical cost of obesity in the United States was $147 billion in 2008 US dollars; the medical cost for people who have obesity was $1,429 higher than those of normal weight"

https://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/adult.html

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> why we don't tackle that with urgency is beyond me

When you see a person not doing something and are confused, a good first step to understanding the situation is to map out the steps that would be required. Then, go through and start listing the risks and impediments to executing those steps.

It is a lot easier to see a good idea than to implement it -- especially if you're willing to distrustfully ignore difficulties as "excuses".

"Adiposity is the Crucial Enhancer of COVID-19" https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7430889/

It has been disappointing to see how our public health officials have taken a defeatist approach by focusing almost entirely on infection control. While minimizing infections is an important aspect of pandemic management, many people are still going to get infected no matter what. So we should also take steps to reduce their risk of a bad outcome, including reducing excess body fat.

Public health officials have tried to get people to lose weight for a while before the pandemic hit, and weren't wildly successful. Considering the difficulties in getting people to go along with very easy interventions, like wearing masks, what makes you expect that public health officials will somehow be more successful at convincing people to lose weight?

We don't have a scientifically proven method to greatly reduce body fat over the long term. (Yes, that includes calorie counting, keto, or whatever other fad diet.) Until we do there isn't much that officials and healthcare providers can to except give out diet and exercise advice that people won't follow.

It has been scientifically proven that consuming fewer calories than you expend over the long term will greatly reduce body fat.

One reason the COVID-19 death rate has been low in Japan despite having a high infection rate and a high proportion of elderly population is that they have very little obesity. I don't support the coercive legal measures they use under the 2008 ”Metabo Law". But strictly from a public health standpoint they have proven effective.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2009-11-10/fat-japan-youre-break...

And if you have a way to get people, on a mass scale, to stick to a reduced calorie diet long-term then you may have a scientifically proven solution. Until you have that you do not have a scientifically proven solution. You have a method of weight loss which only works as long as people stick to it (which scientific studies show they won't).

Fixing it doesn't have urgency to the right people. Kids are too uninformed, adults are too busy and if they're fat, it's easier to cultivate acceptance rather than actually change your lifestyle, corporations profit from consumption so if anything they benefit as obesity and overconsumption is normalized, and people in positions of power and authority have no way to force people to eat healthy.

Health and nutrition are one of the topics where people don't want to hear the truth or know the solution because it's inconvenient and difficult, even though it's straightforward and doable for a lot of people.

There is almost zero institutional legitimacy left because of decades of selling favors, such as blaming fat for the effects of the sugar industry, etc.

Combine this with the replication crisis, and bias towards only funding and publishing novel results... things are worse.

Combine that with the telomere issues from having lab mice optimized for lowest cost... and the subsequent need to re-test everything... and there isn't much hope left.

It doesn’t help that nutrition “science” is a cesspool of correlations. The average Joe has no idea who to believe when it comes to diet recommendations.

If you already follow a diet, especially for the first time, you will likely see result whether this diet is keto, paleo, mediteranean or anything really. i think the positive effect i got when i did keto a few years back were in hindsight 90% taking care of myself, paying attention to what goes in my stomach and some contextual effects (placebo), despite what i said at the time. The allergies reduction might've been keto though.

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