We’re subsidizing companies that create unhealthy addictive food and subsidizing companies to create drugs to counter the unhealthy addictive food. This is an enormous waste of resources.
The problem is not the food. The problem is obesity. The food is only an issue because some people have overly strong appetites relative to the abundance of food. If we can cure obesity, then we can literally have our cake and eat it too.
Humans obviously value tasty and flavorful food, and its existence adds joy to people's lives. That's why they'll pay hundreds of dollars per meal for the best restaurants. In sum total the development of GLP-1 agonists has maybe cost $20 billion in research at most. That's literally less than 0.1% of global GDP, hardly an "enormous waste of resources".
[1] https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...
This is a critical question, because GLP-1 agonists like semaglutide are far more effective at weight loss (with much lower dropout rates) than any diet known to mankind. So if the benefit of the Med diet is mediated by weight loss, who cares in the age of GLP-1 agonists? It's like arguing about the fastest hot air balloon after the invention of the jet engine.
[1]https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Obesity-Mediates-the-A...
If we spent 10% of what we spent on food advertising on large, well funded cohort studies, we'd be far better off as a species.
Humanity's greatest crime is how little science we fund.
HFCS is notorious for the bad effects on the body, versus something like honey.
Same for the Intuit, simpler animal fats vs hydrogenated "trans" fats?
I feel like the key difference in their diets is it's not overly processed and full of things we've decided to put in there for cost reasons (corn subsidies making HFCS cheaper than cane sugar, and trans fats are cheaper than more expensive animal products).
As for HFCS, there's basically zero evidence that they're a major contributor to obesity versus other types of sugar. (In fact, honey consumed by the Hazda has almost the same balance as sugar as HFCS). We have multiple points of evidence to counteract this. 1) Mexico uses substantially less HFCS compared to other types of sugar, but Mexican obesity rates are as high as the US. 2) HFCS, and sugar in general, consumption has declined over the past 20 years. Yet obesity continues to increase. 3) HFCS was widely consumed in the 1980s, when the obesity rate was de minims.
We transitioned from a hunter gatherer, to an agrarian, to an industrial society - because most people needed to do much physical activity to survive, even when food was plentiful.
The information age is much more sedentary, but people have evolved needs to eat a certain amount of volume to feel satiated. The fact that our foods are super nutritious/calorie dense makes matters worse.
I have a hard time believing this without some very strong evidence for this claim. There's already existing evidence for greatly varying health effects of differences in cooking method, oil-type, omega ratios in fats, amino-acid ratios in proteins, glycemic index of carbs, sodium content, etc etc. It's hard for me to reconcile the suggestion that the content of food does not affect whether it is "substantially unhealthy"...
Again this shouldn't shock us, because we know hunter-gatherers across the globe eat tremendously varied diets that come in all sorts of extremes. Yet, modern diseases of affluence (heart disease, diabetes, etc.) are virtually non-existent in these populations. The only thing they have in common is a lack of obesity and non-sedentary lifestyle.
And surely you also agree with the science that we now have drugs that are far more effective at reducing obesity than any diet known to man.
Not sure about the drugs, particularly if treatment has to continue indefinitely in order for people to keep the weight off. Someone else on here linked to a blog post about how those drugs increase the number of fat cells in the body but prevent fat cell hypertrophy, suggesting that rebound weight gain after the drugs are stopped could potentially leave patients worse off than they started. Most adults do not gain new fat cells when they gain weight, their existing fat cells merely get bigger. Leaving people with more fat cells than they had to begin with might make it even harder for them to maintain a lower weight without the drugs, given that fat cells are metabolically active. Who knows how many people may end up stopping them due to side effects or complications like the thyroid tumors these drugs are known to cause in mice. We know very little about the potential unintended consequences of these drugs.
It's common sense.
And also easily provable at the limit: whose healthier at the end of 10 years, subject A consuming 2k calories of salad and lean meat per day, or subject B consuming 2k calories of vodka per day?
At least we know they'll both weigh the same, because thermodynamics, right?
We need to tax the ** out of high calorie foods to fund the extreme cost on health care/society that overeating is causing.
Disagree.
> who consume 50% of their diets in sugar (e.g. the Hadza)
"Their diet is made up almost exclusively of food that they forage on the forest and includes fiber rich and highly nutritious berries, bananas and honey while any meat they eat is hunted and caught wild." (https://healthyfocus.org/the-hadza-diet-and-the-key-to-a-hea...)
They don't eat sugar. Fruits & vegetables with lots of fiber, wild game. Nothing like westerners diet ... so not really comparable, imho.
"... the Inuit's bodies have adapted to better handle the process of gluconeogenesis, in which the body turns fat and protein into useable glucose. The Inuit have larger livers and a larger volume of urine than the average human, which helps their bodies to process the byproducts of their diet." (https://oureverydaylife.com/486115-the-inuit-diet.html)
Also ... not applicable to a typical westerner.
> The problem is not the food. The problem is obesity.
The food is the problem.
Eat whole foods, mostly plants, minumum fats & sugar, and obesity is problem no more.
> the development of GLP-1 agonists has maybe cost $20 billion
What's the total cost of obesity? The cost of diabetes ? It is an enormous waste of resources.
Quality of food is certainly declining, but we are also seeing weight increases in lab rats with extremely controlled diets, so food probably isn't the entire story. There's no accepted explanation for this, but good candidates that might apply to humans are: subtle toxicity by microplastics, and changes in gut microbiomes.
That said, there’s more to the story. For instance, type 2 diabetes in children did NOT EXIST before ~1980, even though there was plenty of abundance and environmental contaminants. This suggest that there is a major issue with the food itself. If you look at where there is the most obesity, within the US or in the world, you also find a strong correlation with processed food. For instance, the Pacific Islanders who suffered obesity epidemics which coincided with processed food replacing their traditional diets.
Any quantity of this food, long term, is likely the reason for the explosive amount of health issues in the population, including many cancers we now commonly deal with.
One of the biggest changes to my health I ever noticed was a switch not in how I ate, but in WHAT I ate.
When I switched my diet over to high quality foods, organic and garden grown, meat I purchased from a local hunter, it made a substantial impact on my health, helped to fix a lot of my cholesterol and blood sugar numbers, and my overall health shot through the roof. No pills required, just decent ingredients, garden grown food, high quality meat.
We do not need the excessive amount of sugar in our food to fully enjoy it. The general public is just totally numb to it because of over consumption and companies are literally competing on having the sweater product.
Such a little price to pay to save your body from horrible side effects
The often-cited studies suggesting Inuit populations were protected from heart disease (Bang and Dyerberg, Feldman et al) comes from limited data which has since been refuted as unreliable and insufficient. The hypotheses they generated don't hold up to the greater balance of data we have, and despite attempts to confirm findings, it simply hasn't happened.
Some studies have suggested to a lesser degree that Inuit populations have marginally smaller rates of coronary artery disease (and other cardiovascular complications), but far more have determined that rates are the same or in some cases/time frames even worse, and risk of stroke has generally trended higher as well. These are all incidents of mortality which have a very, very high correlation with diets which are high in animal fats (as well as salt, regarding strokes).
Here is one very good look at this type of data, and if you look you can also find others: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25064579/
I agree that obesity is a major issue (especially in the case of sugar; it appears less harmful to the body when the sugar is needed and thus used immediately, but harmful when it hangs around and gets turned into fat. This is the main cause of the surge in fatty liver disease, for example), but there is very little and often very poor evidence that obesity is what causes atherosclerosis to occur and become a mortal danger. It seems to be dangerous regardless of weight, and exercise doesn't appear to be wholly protective against it either.
Inuits have actually served as a good example as to why this is true. Even when their obesity rates were lower, their lifestyles required more activity than average, and when studies accounted for BMI, their CAD rates were still on par with western populations according to most data.
Sadly, this means it can be a problem when food tastes too good. The term of art is "hyperpalatable". Studies have shown that even lab animals gorge themselves and get fat and unhealthy when they get human junk food.
I think many people would be grateful to have hyperpalatable food restricted or limited or less visible to them, so the temptation is removed or moderated. How we implement that in society, in a liberal or authoritarian way or somewhere in between, is a separate question.
Junk food corporations make profit by selling food, and they are extremely good at this. They rely on intense advertising, making the food addictive, targeting children. As a side effect, people get obese since they consume more calories that what they need.
I don't know about GLP-1, but my intuition tells me that no drug is going to make eating Mac Donald's and drink Coke healthy, even if it doesn't make you obese.
American food is shit. Most people have no clue what healthy food is, even if they intend to eat a healthy diet.
Edit: you will get fat assuming you are like most people and do not expend greater than 4k calories / day in total
We now know, for example, that fibre is very good for our microbiome. Exclude it from your diet and you'll suffer.
> it is certainly possible to create a "healthy" everyday-McDonalds diet (but you would be changing the meal to the point it won't be recognizable)
So it is possible or not? Why the quotes?
> You can still become obese eating 3000 kcals of salad every day without exercising
I'd like to see you try (just salad as you wrote, no oils and animal based products, please).
That is a lot of kale.
You can keep believing the ads, or just search the term in google/duckduckgo and spend 5 minutes reading different sources.
Just a few examples (first link from a search engine):
"Fiber. You eat 160 calories in almonds, but you absorb only 130. The fiber in the almonds delays absorption of calories into the bloodstream, delivering those calories to the bacteria in your intestine, which chew them up. Because a calorie is not a calorie.
Protein. When it comes to food, you have to put energy in to get energy out. You have to put twice as much energy in to metabolize protein as you do carbohydrate; this is called the thermic effect of food. So protein wastes more energy in its processing. Plus protein reduces hunger better than carbohydrate. Because a calorie is not a calorie.
Fat. All fats release nine calories per gram when burned. But omega-3 fats are heart-healthy and will save your life, while trans fats clog your arteries, leading to a heart attack. Because a calorie is not a calorie.
Sugar. This is the "big kahuna" of the "big lie." Sugar is not one chemical. It's two. Glucose is the energy of life. Every cell in every organism on the planet can burn glucose for energy. Glucose is mildly sweet, but not very interesting (think molasses). Fructose is an entirely different animal. Fructose is very sweet, the molecule we seek. Both burn at four calories per gram. If fructose were just like glucose, then sugar or high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) would be just like starch. But fructose is not glucose. Because a calorie is not a calorie."
Your attitude is the same as a religious person telling depressed people they need jesus rather than prozac.
Before the 80s, food also was packed with fat and sugar, and advertised constantly. I subjectively feel that people saw far more food advertising in the 80s and before than they do now. And the government diet suggestions were to increase your consumption of carbs and reduce fats.
edit: and people definitely drank far more Coke, and McDonald's meals were far less healthy.
Yes, I mean the cause of the obesity epidemics we're witnessing. Not the reason why every single obese person is obese.
My subjective feeling as a European traveling to the US is that it's extremely hard to eat healthy food there. In some states, it seems everybody is obese, including children, and I myself need to fight actively not to gain weight there. People there don't seem to realize that their diet is very unhealthy, and I'm not even sure they make the connection with their obesity. And this trend is happening in Europe too, with a few years lag behind the US.
But this is only my conviction and I didn't find the data to back up my intuition. How do you explain why obesity rate went from 10% to 40% in a few decades?
Again, only hypotheses at this time, but the existing data is far from fluffy and there’s a lot more in the pipes.
The most compelling research I’ve seen used various semi-controlled diets (unfortunately diet was indicated but ultimately self reported by subjects, as it didn’t occur strictly in a controlled environment) with some subjects receiving fecal transplants. Those receiving diverse flora from transplants succeeded much better in losing weight and keeping it off some months later. The study needed stricter controls and more subjects, but it’s a fascinating start.
I’ll point out that the cause of the differences in results isn’t necessarily gut flora alone, too — it’s all super preliminary. This comment is mostly just to say “there are other factors, we just aren’t sure what yet but we have some interesting leads”.
I still managed to lose 40 pounds via calorie restriction and absolutely no change in exercise.
I basically did strict keto for 6 months. CICO is a real thing. Even hypothyroid, you're not going to gain weight if you aren't intaking the calories.
a) don't eat so much they get obese, or b) take an anti-obesity drug so they don't get obese
Which is ridiculous. They would still get sick and die early due to lack of nutrition.
They are, im not fat (visible flexed abs) I did a blood test and found some issues. I cut out the saturated fats I was eating. Brownies, butter, slow cooked meats. tests were normal again.
Imagine that you are at the beach, and you can choose how deep you want to wade or how far you want to swim. If you like the water and the sun and the waves, this is very pleasant to imagine.
Now imagine that you are dropped into the ocean at night 200 meters from shore and you can't see land, you can't see lights. This is very unpleasant to imagine.
Our current food system is much like the second scenario.
Instead of framing it as whether or not it is possible to be healthy in this system, ask if the system is consistent with the goals of being healthy. Is a candy bar and a bag of chips consistent with the goals of being healthy?
If you are dropped in the ocean in the middle of the night, it is possible to swim to land. But it is also very likely that many people will not be able to swim to land in that scenario.
> The food is only an issue because some people have overly strong appetites relative to the abundance of food.
Then why is it advertised? Are food advertisements consistent with the goal of health?
People genuinely enjoy those foods because they're closer to their bliss point than natural analogues. Increasing salt, fat and sugar content of processed foods doesn't mean they're better for consumers. They just mean they're more addictive. People consume more of them and are more likely to purchase them in the future.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bliss_point_(food)
We have no issues identifying that restrictions on tobacco are acceptable from a public health standpoint - the same chemical reward hijacking is being done with food.
Interestingly, a reduction in consumption of processed foods would also likely have a significant impact on the need for health interventions with drugs. We have massive industries propped up by people’s cravings for junk.
People enjoy drugs, I agree. Some get addicted and die though.
I mean, there are responsible/functioning heroin users, it doesn't mean heroin is safe for everyone
> If we can cure obesity
Or you know, practice self control, which is easily in the top 3 of good traits to have and practice. But that's only a part of the equation, the other being the food industry abusing our monkey brains by adding all kind of additives to their food to trigger the right pathways so that we keep consuming their products.
I for one am happy that I escaped this hellish cycle and mostly consume fresh products, but I completely understand how people get tricked into eating heavily processed food and basically slowly sabotage their whole body
> Humans obviously value tasty and flavorful food, and its existence adds joy to people's lives.
We also enjoy all kind of things that cause harm to ourselves or others, this is an extremely weak argument, maybe the weakest of all concerning that topic
To your comment, maybe more countries should attempt to implement programs similar to the UK's success in lowering sodium intake by slowly adjusting the sodium content of all manufacturered foods. https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2013105
Why should that be true? Your kids aren't going off to WW2 to die. You aren't going to starve if bugs ate your crops. You aren't going to get clubbed and robbed if you follow a forest path.
The fact I'm not going to die tomorrow from starvation is an actual reduction in stress.
The fact that someone on the TV is screaming 24/7 that I'm going 'fucking die because THEY are out to get me' is a contrived stressor that has a real effect on everybody in society.
No. I lived through part of the cold war.
In WW2 everybody knew families with dead sons or sons that came back in pieces or sons that just disappeared. My neighbor in the 60s was a paratrooper, who came back missing a leg.
Perhaps the alienation of workers from the fruits of their labor? It's underrated how depressing it is to not get to eat the sausage you broke your back making.
Still, I think its possible to make the idea of "purpose" more concrete. You could define "true meaning and purpose" to be goals that are greater than oneself that require one's full potential in mind and body and sacrifice of immediate pleasures for long-term gain. The widespread nature of obesity indicates that many people don't consider a healthy body as necessary for their goals and hence don't sacrifice immediate food gratification for those goals. Hence most people don't have goals that require their full body potential.
Sugar consumption is going down and it doesn't seem to have any impact.
Calorie equated studies show no difference between low fat or low carb diets.
It all boils down to excess calories.
Regressive taxes also don't work well. I don't always eat super healthy. Making unhealthy food cost more wouldn't have any measurable impact, except maybe tanking my 401k because half the Fortune 500 goes out of business.
People complained about cigarette taxes wouldn’t be effective but they are.
The stock market didn’t crash either despite the multibillion dollar tobacco companies being affected.
Hell I'd be ok with banning all forms of food advertising and requiring that all foods be blank packages with nothing but the ingredients, nutrition facts, and a short description of how they were prepared. I'd prefer that world on general principle. But I don't think it would fix the obesity epidemic.
Now, what are we doing?
* Getting people to stop consuming sugary drinks and other very unhealthy items (maybe that would require drugs at this point)?
* Or offer people drugs so this side-effect of an unhealthy diet can be avoided?
If we're offer a way to continue a bad diet without this effect, it seems very likely further bad effects will appear X many years from now from a combination of the drugs and the bad diet. Because virtually all drugs taken forever accumulate side-effects over since the body did evolve to process them (these drugs may indeed be needed at times but the point remains).
Anyway, 'getting people to stop' turns out to be impossible for some. The drugs are meant to help with that.
Diet soda and bottled water exist and somehow people still keep choosing sugary drinks. In fact people often have a ready excuse for why they consider diet soda more unhealthy!
At the end of the day, or maybe week, or possible even month you have to eat or you're going to die. Simply put you require caloric intake to survive. Yea, you can ban coke and candybars, and hell that's a good idea. But what about bread? Or do you monitor and watch to make sure everyone only eats two slices? Make sure foods at restaurants only have so many calories per serving and ensure they people can only buy one meal per meal?
At some point it still falls apart because it is human nature to massively overconsume since the vast majority of history we've been calorie short. You're dealing with an animal response here that is going to be very difficult to override to the under/normal consumption side.
And the reverse is also true, if you go a while without eating anything high in sugar, what used to taste normal can taste almost unbearably sweet. Exceedingly hard to do with it added to just about all things in absurd amounts though.
People love to bitch about the "diet industry" (which as a whole, seems to be almost entirely bro-science and snake oil), but the profits made there pale in comparison to fast food and processed food. It's really something that we should fix, like we did with tobacco and alcohol.
Fixing food deserts, even though they are not really widespread enough to entirely account for the obesity epidemic, needs to happen as well.
And taking subsidies away from animal products like meat, dairy and corn (specifically for HFCS) would go a long ways to improving the standard American diet (aka, SAD).
Of course it is, which is fantastic for the economy. Like the Industrial War Complex, it's horrifically bad for people and resources, but does wonders for the pockets of those in power
I eat junk food mainly because it takes me no effort and still tastes good: for me the addiction is not having to put in any effort to be satiated, more than the taste itself.
And when I do eat junk food I don't eat a crazy amount in volume. But the calorie density of them makes it such that I ate a crazy amount of calories. It's not that I eat a bag of chips per day. But a small bag of chips is 240 calories, while carrot chips of the same mass/volume are 20 calories.
Do I prefer junk food over some healthy food -- yes, probably so (but I love broccoli). But I don't know that my eating habits are drastically different between the two. To put it another way, if the junk food I ate suddenly became healthy for you, I think people say I was just eating a healthy diet.
I may have an unusually addictive personality given that I've had issues with abusing other substances, but I noticed these addictive food behaviors in myself from a very young age before I'd ever touched alcohol or drugs. They bear little resemblance to how I eat when presented with fresh foods. We probably all have varying degrees of susceptibility to addictive junk foods and I'm just more susceptible than you (though also lucky enough to be very energetic and active so I haven't actually ended up overweight).
If you just mean "if you don't eat, you die", I don't think that qualifies as an addiction.
If you mean "if you suddenly eat a lot more for some meal than you usually do, you will likely be more hungry the next day than usual", I also don't think that really qualifies. It's not the same kind of thing?
With food, the desire to eat is part of the proper functioning, not due to damage due to previous food usage.
I don’t know how to precisely make this distinction because I am not a neuroscientist (neurobiologist?) .
But I’m still fairly confident that this distinction can be made in theory, and not just in practice.
Probably something about how some compounds (that generally aren’t present in the brain in substantial quantities) bind to some receptors, and this has such and such consequences, and then later when said compounds are not present, either some other receptors are plugged or inactive or are active, or some other chemicals are present in higher or lower than normal concentrations, in ways that cause problems which would in some ways be alleviated by the aforementioned compounds that are not typically in the brain in large quantities, and which would not be alleviated by whatever other compounds that would activate reward centers or whatever.
When someone is addicted to nicotine, they are addicted to specifically nicotine. When someone is addicted to alcohol, they are addicted to specifically alcohol.
And you needing water every three days is meaningful. In fact, that's a great definition! Its clear what the meaning in the case of water is. I'm not sure what saying "Doritos" is addictive means? I love Doritos, but when I traveled abroad I went six months without seeing a bag and never thought of them. What exactly does "specifically addictive" mean?
But it's not difficult to stop. From a volume/mass perspective I eat fairly small amount of Doritos in sittings compared to most "healthy" food. Its just that Doritos are super calorie dense. I definitely eat a higher mass of eggplant in a sitting than Doritos. And when I don't have access to Doritos, I don't ever think of doing anything unethical or illegal to obtain access.
Now your point is that people may eat themselves into unhealthy situations and want to stop. That is probably true, although I wonder how much of that is convenience, rather than addiction.
Simply put if you take mammalian models and allow them to eat all they want they blow up like little balloons. This is no different from bears feasting on salmon for the last millions of years. Creatures are designed to overconsume because the ones that didn't in the past didn't make it thru the lean times.