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Comment by PostOnce | Hacker News Reader

They left in wonky nose, crooked mouth, and stick out teeth, but took out the reference to fat? That's wild.

The fat is arguably the only fixable thing, or at least the cheapest. You can't "just stop eating so much" and fix a wonky nose or stick out teeth.

Calories aren't magic and hard to fathom.

Normalizing being overweight is going to kill a lot of people early.

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We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849710 and marked it off topic.

Is it off topic? It's a direct commentary on the precise changes being made? What constitutes off topic in this case?

I mean... it's weird that they (the publishers, or possibly the estate) think it's okay to retroactively edit these books at all, but the specific edits they have made make it all the more bizarre.

It's really very strange to take a view that weight is sacred, but teeth, noses, and other aspects of general appearance are not.

This type of moderation is always a response to the subthread (i.e. root comment plus all descendants), not the root comment alone.

Thanks for explaining; that makes sense, it did descend into a bit of a culture war and become detached from the point.

Thanks for getting it! It's a bit of a subtle point.

Actually it took us years to begin thinking this way but once we figured it out as a principle it changed a ton about how we moderate HN threads.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

It's because universities have Fat Studies departments, but don't yet have Wonky Nose Studies departments.

It's really quite difficult to lose weight and keep it off. Certainly cheaper than dentistry, but still difficult. I read a book called 'Fat Chance' that goes into the science of why it's difficult.

I have little doubt that its difficult, but the point remains that you cant change your lifestyle to become “less ugly” (where ugly is a stand-in for unconventional features, like a crooked nose, yellow/wonky teeth, hunchback or what have you).

I'm a bit conflicted on this. On the one hand there's an absolute overweight & obesity epidemic, roughly 80% of Americans males are Overweight (35%) or Obese (35% obese, 5% extremely obese)[0]. So obviously, it's not easy to maintain a regular weight as 80% fail.

On the other hand these figures are wildly different among humans with similar genetic profiles in other countries, and among humans of the same country 1, 2 or 3 generations ago. In other words: it's not our genetic disposition that's making us fat, it really is our behaviour. And yes it's behaviour in a different food market, but it's behaviour nonetheless.

My parents for example simply as a rule do not buy much processed food and they've always had a normal weight, never dieted, never made any effort apart from eating 'normal' like they were taught or taught themselves. For them a normal diet is as normal as putting on clothes in the morning.

It really is absurdly simple to just buy many kinds of vegetables and eat them with little or no prep. It's really easy to choose to eat lentils. It's really easy to read labels. It's easy to apply the rule to not use sugar in a recipe. It's really easy to make your own salad, I had 'salad making duty' as a kid for the first 20 years of my life or so, we had a salad everyday (we grew up on welfare btw if anyone wants to make the healthy = expensive pricing argument, it's not true). It's really not that hard to eat healthy, in fact it's easier than ever. My grandparents had to visit 10 different small stores where I can go to one supermarket, they had to buy anything fresh constantly for lack of refrigeration where I can store many foods for a long time, they spent a large chunk of their income on food whereas staple foods for me are much cheaper etc etc.

That having been said, both my parents have had quite a bit of dental work as they aged, despite taking good care of their teeth.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#/...

Agreed. Every Sunday, I cook a large portion of something healthy, and store it in containers to eat throughout the week. This past week, it was chili with beans. The week before, chicken vegetable brown rice soup. The week before, chunky vegetable spaghetti sauce with whole wheat noodles. I've become pretty good at cooking, so it's always tasty, good food. I always get at least six large servings from what I cook, and the total cost is rarely more than $10.

For breakfast, I usually have oatmeal cooked with soy milk, with a banana chopped in, sweetened with honey. It's unreasonably good, super easy, very filling, healthy, and dirt cheap - probably less than 50 cents per breakfast.

A plate of sliced apples, avocados, whole wheat toast (ideally good specialty bread from a bakery), baby carrots, cheese, and pickled vegetables also makes for tasty, filling, easy, cheap meal.

I've always strongly disagreed with the notion that healthy food is prohibitively expensive. A quick trip to any grocery store proves that eating healthily is cheaper than eating a bunch of processed food, and I've found that you don't even have to put that much effort into cooking to get something that ticks all the boxes.

I can only conclude that most people are some combination of very lazy when it comes to cooking and ignorant about what's possible.

I can’t stand to eat the same meal every day though. That’s the issue I’ve always had when trying meal prep. By Friday I’m ready to hang myself.

Make two or three things, freeze them, heat from frozen.

This is a research and effort issue.

Yeah I've never had that problem, and I think it's because I cook my food exactly the way I want it: extra spicy (as in spices), but also extra spicy (as in capsaicin).

Every bite is better than restaurant-quality to me because it's exactly how I like it.

It's easier than ever to eat healthy, yet 80% of Americans males are overweight. Something is not right here, either of those statements have to be false.

They can both be true, and they are. It’s easier than ever to eat healthy, but thanks to the same abundance, it’s also easier than ever to eat too much, and most Americans choose the latter.

That's probably because everything we've been taught about fat since the 80s turned out to be very wrong. Read up on the problems with the Lipid Hypothesis and the food pyramid which resulted from it.

only 1% of people can lose more than 5kg and keep it off.

if almost 100% of people can't do something, describing it as "not hard to fathom" completely misrepresents the issue.

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