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Comment by Sterm | Hacker News Reader

If it did US life expectancy wouldn't lower today than it was in 2008.

That's a bit of a tenuous connection.

That decline is an anomaly. The majority of it is attributable to covid, and a significant minority attributable to fentanyl: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2022/...

I do agree that the "rising tide raises all boats" rhetoric is largely bunk. But I don't think that this one particular measure, taken at an anomalous time, is sound footing for a counterargument.

That’s mostly due to obesity, which is a consequence of the quantity and (flavor) quality of food getting better over time; a side effect of economic prosperity.

s/economic prosperity/lack of regulation/

Palm oil is in everything in the US, in France there's a lot more lighter oils and butter.

The obesity epidemic hasn’t spared France either: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_France

You meant getting worse.

No, I didn’t.

Obesity is a side effect of having so much food that calories are cheap and plentiful. That’s why obesity rates are rising everywhere in the first world. It’s also something virtually unprecedented in human history.

And it won't last. Fossil fuels make up almost all fertilizer.

If food is killing more people than it used to that's not an improvement in food.

If you have so much food even the poorest people can get fat, you are a richer and more prosperous society than 99.9% of human history.

Btw obesity is rising in Europe as well.

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