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Comment by djsudysgcc | Hacker News Reader

Say what you want but pharmaceuticals are perhaps the only hope America has against the obesity epidemic.

Or better regulation.

Treating refined sugar as the addictive substance it is, and keeping those products in a separate part of the store rather than at the checkout line. Removing subsidies for unhealthy ingredients, subsidising healthier ones. More education in schools. Better funding and requiring school districts to meet certain quality standards for the food they provide to children. Ensuring all children have the right to a healthy meal. Where previous initiatives have fallen short, critically evaluate why and make them better. Thinking about social psychological factors for our collective mental health and thinking about how this influences our dietary and exercise choices.

There are lots of actions that could be taken that are not just pharmaceutical.

lol regulate it like cigarettes. 18+ to buy it, hidden behind the counter on that shelf that only shows the name part of the label.

"Hi, can I get a ... snickers please?"

"Ye but i'll have to see some ID first!"

This is more than just children, the food environment adults are subject to encourages unhealthy habits too. Locking kitkats up won't change a thing.

Just look at American portion sizes at any restaurant -- they're huge! The common mantra is that we want to ensure we get our money's worth. I was astounded on my trips to France. The dinners were still filling, but were much smaller than most American restaurants I've dealt with on the East Coast, Southeast, and Midwest.

Plus we put sugar/HFCS in literally everything. If you wanted to save a few calories and eat a ham sandwich at home, the basic loaf of white bread you're yanking off the shelf has HFCS, and for what?

This isn't even getting to the usual punching bag of fast food/fast casual, where you're easily set back 1000-1500kcals on the default menu selection.

Sugars make people happy, fat and happy people don't revolt

Jan 6 mob had a lot of fatties. Just saying.

Or GLP-1 pathway targeted gene therapy.

Interesting is anyone doing it?

Fractyl Health.

https://www.fractyl.com/fractyl-health-demonstrates-signific...

(no affiliation, just very interested in a permanent fix that scales vs chronic mgmt with a pharma product)

Trial starting this year and listed on a stock exchange meaning there should be lots of good info disclosed ! Cool thank you

That's certainly a take, but without reasoning or evidence, this isn't a very interesting comment.

The epidemic itself is pretty strong evidence. Gastric bypass and these new drugs are basically the only proven effective ways of reliably helping people lose.

I mean, most of those people could just exercise or change their diets instead of relying on expensive drugs with unknown long term side effects

Except they can’t. We know this. Telling obese people “just change your diet and exercise” has roughly the success rate as hiring a witch to cast a spell.

There are cultures in which obesity is rare and yet they achieve it without drugs and surgery. That itself is pretty strong evidence that the claim that they're the only things that could possibly help is wrong. I'm glad those are options, because they certainly do help people, but if you take that and run with "welp, more pharma is the only way!" then you're not thinking very hard.

Well gee, if all we have to do is change our entire culture, that sounds easy!

I mean, I didn't say it was. Most things worth doing aren't easy. Listen, all I'm saying is we should strive for something better than to be content with producing lots of obese people and then "fix" them with drugs. Pharma would love that, I'm sure, but it's a tactical fix that needs a strategic solution.

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