Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Treating long term is a lot more profitable than curing too.

One of the worst things that ever happened to pharmaceutical industry profits was the the discovery that most ulcers can be cheaply cured with antibiotics (which won the discovers a well deserved Nobel prize).

Even after this ulcer drugs were hugely profitable. I cannot remember the numbers from when I was an analyst covering them (more than 20 years ago!), but at one point a very big proportion (maybe even most) of Astrazeneca's profits came from their blockbuster ulcer treatment. Imagine how much more profitable that would be without a cheap cure around!

Gyms are not the solution, nor are health food stores. Far more people join gyms than make use of them. You can keep fit going for walks or running or a multitude of cheap things. IMO the problems are lack of time for exercise and money for a healthy diet.

Poor people have a far worse diet than rich people because they have to fill up with cheap junk. Junk food takes less time to prepare. I have ready meals sometimes because I am tired. Some people have to do it all the time, and they do not have the money to be fussy about how healthy the meals are.

>the problems are lack of time for exercise and money for a healthy diet.

pretty much. You go to some circles that will keep swearing by "Calories in, Calories out", and blaming any detteral of this as laziness. It's basically the equivalent of saying "stop smoking" to a smoker. Yes, they are objectiely right, but also miss all the subtlety of the steps needed to "stop smoking".

Time is definitely the biggest factor, and modern society feels like it's demanding more time than ever of workers for less spending power than ever. Of course people don't have time to work on their diet/exercise when some are working 2+ jobs at barely above minimum wage.

Where exactly is the nuance in this?

I pity the smoker more because they don’t have to smoke but feel compelled to smoke through addiction.

You have direct control over how many calories you consume and it’s a basic human instinct to eat.

Saying there’s nuanced steps inbetween is just a way to hand wave away someone’s laziness to not tackle the problem.

The same compulsion that drives the smoker to smoke drives the person that eats compulsively to eat. Be it for comfort or habit. Hormones and neurotransmitters drive behavior.

What gets deposited into your bank account and what gets stocked at your local grocery drives what you put into your body to survive.

If eating healthy is too expensive or outright impossible because of what is stocked at your local grocery and your hormones and neurotransmitters are telling you overwhelmingly to eat poorly... Is this laziness?

I'd argue that it's harder to quit compulsive eating than it is to quit compulsive smoking. You can't go cold turkey on food

What does “going cold turkey on food” look like here? Because I’ve quit a pack-a-day-for-ten-years nicotine addiction, and I’ve dieted by slightly increasing exercise and slightly decreasing caloric consumption to produce a daily deficit of about 250-500 calories in line with mainstream medical recommendations, and I can tell you which I found harder… and it wasn’t drinking diet soda and walking around the block in the morning.

I suppose the cold turkey equivalent here is intermittent fasting. Disciplining yourself to ignore the most basic instincts of survival and eat at a specific time.

I never smoked nor fasted, so I can't really compare the two.

That's true, you can't go cold turkey on food, but you can change what you eat. Gorging on fats and proteins and high density foods (nuts, cheeses, legumes, olive oil, eggs, etc) will have a very different effect than gorging on fats and sugars (pastries, white breads, soda etc.)

> I pity the smoker more because they don’t have to smoke but feel compelled to smoke through addiction.

We all feel compelled to eat.

A lot of cheap food does not satisfy hunger for as long as better food.

Just cutting calories in can make you feel less able to do things, so you automatically cut back on exercise.

People differ in many ways: metabolism, genetics, physical sicknesses, mental health, gut bacteria and probably many more things I cannot think of will change how the same diet affects different people, and their ability to exercise.

>>>Just cutting calories in can make you feel less able to do things, so you automatically cut back on exercise.

As someone who has dieted by cutting and counting calories. This wasn’t true, I didn’t have the energy for high intensity workouts sure but I did have the energy to walk a mile or two and the result is the same loss of calories as 2 mile run. Walking just takes a bit longer.

The important thing was drinking a lot of water or gassy things to feel full to quiet the urge to snack.

Also Deleting junk food, sodas , and beer completely from my pantry. Having coffee without cream, Replacing them with low calories snacks like carrots, celery, bananas.

I dropped 15 lbs fairly fast.

> Also Deleting junk food, sodas , and beer completely from my pantry.

So you improved the quality of your diet significantly. That is very different from just eating fewer calories. I suspect that if you had not done this it would have worked.

> Replacing them with low calories snacks like carrots, celery, bananas.

Also improving your fibre intake, and other improvements in nutrition too.

The cost of diet point is absolutely true. I'm a writer and filmmaker living in Europe - i.e.: poor. I've also got a variety of food intolerances and health issues, which compound over time. To help with stomach and sleep issues I'm currently trying to eat only foods I cook from scratch: mostly fish, meat and veg and a little fruit. It's wildly more expensive (and time consuming) than cooking prepackaged food. Fortunately I'm located in Ireland where there are plentiful sources of good quality fresh veg and meat, but it has literally doubled my weekly shop cost vs say pasta, chips, processed meat and other cheap carbs.

> pasta, chips, processed meat and other cheap carbs.

Carbs are one aspect of diet. There's very little actual nutrition in any of those things.

Yes, that's my point... It's cheaper to eat poorly. It's (significantly) more expensive to eat well. As I said before I'm spending more than twice as much cooking from scratch. And (as I'm coeliac and intolerant of milk) I wasn't eating the cheapest food before by any means. I reckon here in Dublin, the cheapest (and extremely unhealthy) diet of oven chips, pasta, bread etc - could be had for well under 20 euro per person per week. Whereas my partner and I are currently spending around 150 on veg and meet between us.

I don't think "have to" is correct here. I've lived without savings and income without ever eating any unhealthy foods.Education and motivation is a big deal.

On the topic of time.

I’m a fitness person, I love it and have made it large part of my none professional life. One of the most annoying things I hear fitness people say is:

We all have the same 24 hours.

Yeh no, people don’t and telling them that isn’t helping. What’s better is to accept people have different lived and see how exercise can be snuck in.

Getting off the bus two stops early to get a 10 minute walk for example is a pretty manageable one.

I am also a fit person. When I hear someone tell me that they don't have time for doing exercise I do not respond, I just listen and watch. I almost always will see the same person in the next days watching TV, or social media or playing video games for hours.

I do minimal high intensity exercise every single day, it is just routine, because I am busy. Everyone can learn that. In fact I see the biggest number of betting shops in the poorest part of the cities as they are more vulnerable to learning bad habits, as companies are eager to teach those as it is great business.

Sure, and you’re right in plenty of cases. But likewise if your day to day is hard, stressful and has a decent amount of worry then once you’ve got the kids to bed at 8:30 the will power required to do some exercise is monumental. Quite frankly their will power points are gone for the day.

So, instead try to find a way to squeeze exercise in as part of daily life (essentially habit stacking)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com