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Comment by chmod775 | Hacker News Reader

The fact that people who are spending too much money on food would spend even more money to buy a weight-loss drug rather than get their food-intake under control, saving money, is an indictment of our species if I've ever seen one. At least it's supposed to decrease food cravings, so you might at least save some...

Yet for some reason our species loves to come up with the most convoluted and expensive band-aid solutions rather than fixing a problem at its root. You can see the same with the whole atmospherical carbon-capture nonsense.

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> The fact that people who are spending too much money on food would spend even more money to buy a weight-loss drug rather than get their food-intake under control, saving money, is an indictment of our species if I've ever seen one.

This is needlessly judgmental. This drug reduces the impulse to eat when you're not actually hungry. We need to think about obesity as more than just a lack of self control - normal people don't have the impulse to eat all of the time, and this stuff just brings you to that baseline. The weight loss is literally a side effect of the drug.

If you’re in the US, normal is actually overweight and constantly eating.

> We need to think about obesity as more than just a lack of self control

Do we? I've seen no stats and received no reasons to believe that the majority of obese people have such a distorted appetite that lack of willpower can't be inferred from their state. Also, exercise exists, even for large eaters.

But as always, I don't expect HN (like most places full of Overton prisoners) to react well to the now heretical notion that responsibility is more than a social construct and that the new religion of hedonism is wrong and destructive.

Exercise isn't an effective method of weight loss. Naturally having a labor intensive job can be, but it's basically a waste of time to try and exercise something off when it would've been better to not eat it.

Anyway, "lack of willpower" isn't a cause nor does it fit the evidence very well. For instance, obesity in the US is geographical, correlated with lower altitudes[0], and it happens to animals as well as humans[1].

(Hint: it's caused by pollutants.)

[0] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

[1] https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rspb.2010...

Chinese large cities are way more polluted than in the US yet they aren't particularly known for their obesity issues.

As usual, correlation isn't causation and my best bet is that there are more cities at lower altitude, which means more sedentary and/or "Western" urban way of life (including eating bad food in too large quantities and office jobs).

Anyway, I don't think that anyone rational and arguing in good faith can say that low willpower isn't the predominant ingredient in the 1st world's obesity crisis. Especially anyone coming from said 1st world and having interacted with some of the "victims".

> Chinese large cities are way more polluted than in the US yet they aren't particularly known for their obesity issues.

You might be confusing China with Japan. China has well known issues with obesity. Particularly the male population does look far from healthy in any major city. Women not so much, but that can mainly be attributed to beauty standards where having a slim figure is extremely important. Somewhere around ~40% of the male population and 25% of the female population in cities are overweight. For obesity it's 20% and 10%.[1]

Also I'm pretty sure that certain healthier groups hide the extent of the problem a lot. Be out and about at the right time and you'll wonder whether there's any healthy guys at all.

Why? Even ignoring that pollution argument for a minute, China was a place where I actually struggled to not overeat. If you live and work in a city, eating every major meal at restaurants/street food places is perfectly normal there, and almost all of that food is ultra-processed and full of chemicals that will make you want to keep eating. With cheap, near-instantaneous, and ubiquitous delivery of almost everything, there's no financial, time, or logistical reasons to prepare your own food even while at home. By comparison the conveniences that we have in the west (Uber et al.) are laughable, as are any complaints that it is oh-so-hard to find affordable healthy nutrition.

[1]https://dom-pubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dom.152...

Thanks for the heads-up, honestly, I wouldn't have thought so. Don't think I was wrong in saying that they aren't "known" for it (at least here, in Europe), though, but that's besides the point.

I actually linked a quasi-experimental paper that does show causation.

> "Western" urban way of life (including eating bad food in too large quantities and office jobs).

The issue is "too large quantities". What's the cause of that? It's been available for much longer than Americans have been obese.

Asians work longer hours, probably drink more, and are thin even though their extra walking shouldn't matter that much.

Well I shouldn't have said Asians there. I meant Korea and Japan but not familiar with anywhere else.

Korea absolutely has an obesity problem - it's about a third of the population, but ~40% in men. Japan doesn't. But both also have issues with high suicide rates, alcohol abuse, and general overwork.

>What's the cause of that?

Gluttony is something as old as Christianity...

That's the problem. You can't explain something that recently changed using something that's always true.

Of course you can, because while gluttony has always existed, both absurd abundance and tolerance taken to its extreme haven't. You can guess the interactions between all of these, I wager.

Either the impulse to load up on candy is so strong that one needs a $1,000 / month weight loss drug, or we are just that weak-willed. It doesn't matter: We, as a species, are comically embarrassing sometimes.

The point wasn't to be judgemental, it was commentary. I'm not free of vices either.

I would argue it’s not a bandaid solution if it gives individuals an opportunity to pull back the curtain and experience themselves in a state of moderated consumption.

Lol, this is being written on a computer and I'm reading this on a computer. Neither existed for 99.9% of human history.

Modern problems require modern solutions!

Even if you don't insist that people summon the willpower to JFDI (which I maintain is probably possible for a majority), you still have to ask why everything is such a gauntlet that large numbers of people benefit from these pills. Like, we didn't reduce smoking in the US by popularizing Nicorette. No, we reduced the availability and created more stigma. Have you seen what cigarettes cost after tax? But Twinkies are cheap.

Having a visual marker of low willpower is pretty useful, I'd say. Other than that, I guess there may be some consequences to mass usage of chemical shortcuts to psychological and/or moral problems.

A bit like the famous "programmers trying to solve societal issues through tech" thing.

Some of this is the byproduct of the world's industrial food complex. Foods are being processed and manipulated for maximum addiction. And most of the most addictive foods are the cheapest. Healthy and fresh unprocessed foods are more expensive than other shelf stable options.

> And most of the most addictive foods are the cheapest. Healthy and fresh unprocessed foods are more expensive than other shelf stable options.

I've heard this multiple times, yet I get the opposite picture at any supermarket. Buying about 14k calories of well-balanced food (oats, bread, high-protein cheeses, some meat, some veggies, fruit, nuts, noodles, yoghurt, milk, whatever) costs me around 30 Euro. Suppose I could've bought nothing but 5kg of the cheapest wiener sausages to get that same number of calories, but even they are 6 Euro/kg, so exactly the same price.

Getting 14k calories buying BigMacs at McDonald's would've cost me 150 Euro (6 Euro / 500kcal).

What the fuck are people buying to live unhealthily for less? Raw sugar? Since you also mentioned "most addictive", I now picture that people have diets consisting mostly of candy. Cheap candy.

The fact remains that a healthy diet is perfectly affordable - I can cover the basics for less than 150 Euro / month, and I'm not price conscious, even opting for the expensive options in the fruit/vegetable department. That amount of money is nothing in a country where the minimum wage is 1600 Euro / month (4k/mo average).

So yes, I'd tentatively agree on "addictive", but not so much on "expensive". At the end of the day humans are supposed to be 'addicted' to food - it's called hunger. Eating oats will get rid of that craving just like eating gummy bears will, but the gummy bears are just bad decision-making. You had to physically go out of your way to buy those over something else, just so you had them on you the next time you are hungry.

I see that this is a US versus Europe issue. It is also a problem with "normal". People grow up eating overly sugary foods and that becomes normal to them. A lot of the US "whole grain" breads have more sugar than the white bread versions. Our "no fat" yogurts are filled with sugar. People drink monstrous "coffee" drinks that are 1200 calories. Our food pyramid was developed by the Department of Agriculture, NOT the Department of Health. There is corn syrup in almost everything.

"Not just sweetened soda, but many other packaged foods sold in the US contain up to twice as much sugar as their European counterparts."

[https://medium.com/wise-well/us-foods-often-pack-more-sugar-...]

1) You have a supermarket and not a shitty dollar tree

2) You have a fridge to put those spoil prone foods

3) You have time to prepare those foods

4) You have transportation for the raw foods or can drive them and buy in bulk

I go to the grocery store and see large people loading up their carts with junk, including ice cream.

The people for whom no store/no car/no fridge is a problem are few and far between.

Damn what a compelling anecdote. I guess that's case closed.

> The people for whom no store/no car/no fridge is a problem are few and far between.

You've never lived in the hood I see.

> 1) You have a supermarket and not a shitty dollar tree

Assuming that means "dollar store", fair. I live in a country where supermarkets are within walking distance for most of the population and vastly outnumber random convenience stores that sell mostly candy, so my perspective on this may be skewed.

> 2) You have a fridge to put those spoil prone foods

In a developed country everyone does. If you can afford an expensive weight loss drug, you probably own one too!

The local equivalent of craigslist has used full-sized fridges for 50 bucks and if you really need new, you can buy a crappy model on Amazon for 120 Euro.

From traveling a fair bit I can tell you that refrigeration was ubiquitous even in the poorest places I've visited.

> 3) You have time to prepare those foods

I hate cooking and preparing food. The most I do is eggs, noodles, or throwing some stuff in a store-bought soup base. That takes 15 minutes of cooking and 5 minutes of cleaning.

> 4) You have transportation for the raw foods or can drive them and buy in bulk

I have 4 supermarkets within a 15 minute walking distance. I don't own a car. The aforementioned shopping list feeds me for about a week and I can carry that home just fine. If I couldn't, I could have it delivered - add ten bucks, it's still nothing.

My grandparents live on the country side. They each only have one supermarket in walking distance, but they do own a car to get around anyways, since it's the countryside. They also could have their groceries delivered (and many old people do).

I recognize that there may be situations where you're just screwed and it's physically impossible to have a healthy diet, but that is true for maybe 0.05% of the population?

In any case if you can't have a healthy diet where you live, the solution isn't to start taking expensive drugs to compensate. If you have $1k/month to pay for Ozempic, you have money to move. Or get a car. Or a fridge. Ozempic would just be a band-aid and you're gonna bounce right back once you stop taking it.

So in conclusion, both the environment and the money argument is nonsense as long as we're talking about a stupidly expensive drug.

A dollar tree is sort of the opposite of a bulk discount store. It's a specific brand but it's sort of the modern evolution of the role of a dollar store of decades past. It optimizes to make the absolute price of goods small even if that means the unit price is bad and caters to folks living paycheck to paycheck that need to buy food for the immediate short term. A dollar tree is unlikely to have fresh food, at all.

This story is largely the same with the thought model of fast food. You have no time and very limited money. Fast food is the cheapest immediate option to satisfy immediate needs at a minimum even if it fails hard against longer term ideal goals.

Your 20 minutes of cooking and cleaning is a larger luxury than you seem to acknowledge. It's also not in line with your previous comments about the kinds of food you're buying. Noodles and eggs and a store bought soup base is not nutritious or particularly satisfying. And of course the crushing burden of poverty just sucks. The relief that a fast food meal offers is non trivial. I don't eat at McDonalds, ever, but I'm not going to pretend that a burger and fries isn't going to be infinitely more rewarding than some basic noodles in salty packet broth. Mostly because of the protein and fat that is difficult to get in non fresh foods.

Look into food deserts if you're genuinely interested

US https://www.aecf.org/blog/exploring-americas-food-deserts

UK https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/oct/12/more-than-a-...

> Your 20 minutes of cooking and cleaning is a larger luxury than you seem to acknowledge.

What the fuck. I live in a developed country. Even the poorest most-overworked person I've ever met is perfectly able to find 20 minutes to cook. In fact said overworked people would have to, since that's the cheapest way to feed a family. What sort of unicorns are we talking about here.

> It's also not in line with your previous comments about the kinds of food you're buying. Noodles and eggs and a store bought soup base is not nutritious or particularly satisfying.

> [..] Mostly because of the protein and fat that is difficult to get in non fresh foods.

I don't really follow. The stuff I buy gets me all the nutrients I'd need in a day, as well as >30g of protein (a lot of it from Handkäse, which is ~30% protein, contains near zero fat and carbs, and is dirt cheap).

My selection of foods isn't random. Lacking nutrients or too much of the wrong thing makes you feel awful, and I hate feeling that way. Additionally most of what I buy will stay safe to eat for weeks, weeks, or even years. All that really goes bad quickly is fruit, veggies, or milk/yoghurt (depends). If you are physically unable to keep these three things stocked, you are not living in a developed country or require assisted living.

Also I really only cook maybe once a week. I just happen to enjoy the good old bread with cheeses and sliced meats well enough. If I really want a warm meal, I'll eat at a restaurant (10-20 bucks), but that's a luxury that is not a requirement to completing my diet at all.

> And of course the crushing burden of poverty just sucks.

A bit tangential at this point, but if you're paying $1k/month for Ozempic you are not feeling "the crushing burden of poverty".

> Look into food deserts if you're genuinely interested

I'm intellectually aware they exist, but they still bewilder me. If these things are really a problem for more than 1% of the population, then in my head I will downgrade the country in question from "developed" to "mostly developed" and exclude them from any argument talking about developed countries. Millions of people can't get the nutrients they need and their country is struggling to correct that. Maybe the World Food Program should help out? Get some foreign aid shipments? I'm joking of course, but clearly Ozempic isn't the answer here either.

In any case, let's limit the discussion to areas that can actually be considered developed, because clearly most people in overall developed countries don't live in food deserts and their obesity cannot be explained that way either. Bringing this up as a defense is like defending thieves as a whole because some of them have only stolen food while on the brink of starvation or their name may even be Robin Hood. What about the rest of them?

Let's say it does just come down to willpower.

Willpower isn't evenly distributed. A drug that does something close to giving someone more willpower seems like a reasonable therapy compared to your unique solution of "just have more willpower like me".

HN is rapidly becoming reddit. There is where I expect to find specious and empty reasoning propped up entirely by weird anti-modernist rhetoric. This isn't even on topic for the original post.

Who are you, random internet weirdo, to indict seven billion people because of a company making and selling a drug. For a cranky libertarian hermit you sure have a lot to say about how the market is wrong.

When they have a similar solution for helping tamp down on severe alcoholism, I look forward to your equally ludicrous opinion about "people spending too much on alcohol" and "getting intake under control".

You couldn't even be bothered to cite one article that would prove spending more money is correlated with obesity. Luckily for me I have plenty that prove your claim is ridiculous on its face.

Drewnowski, Adam and SE Specter. “Poverty and obesity: the role of energy density and energy costs.” The American journal of clinical nutrition 79 1 (2004): 6-16 .

Ogden, Cynthia L, M. Carroll, Tala H. I. Fakhouri, Craig M. Hales, Cheryl D. Fryar, Xianfen Li and David S. Freedman. “Prevalence of Obesity Among Youths by Household Income and Education Level of Head of Household — United States 2011–2014.” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 67 (2018): 186 - 189.

to be fair, your comment is also very reddit-eqsue, as is comparing HN to reddit, which has been claimed for over a decade to the point it's literally in the guidelines to stop saying it

Have you tried the drug?

> Who are you, random internet weirdo, to indict seven billion people

I'm one of those people, which makes me as qualified to say "we suck" as it makes you to claim the opposite.

> You couldn't even be bothered to cite one article that would prove spending more money is correlated with obesity.

Seriously? Way to twist my words. But anyways:

   calories in - calories out - calories burned = weight gain

Calories in costs money proportional to amount. It doesn't matter whether it's healthy calories or not. If you ate nothing but sausage, you would gain less weight the less sausage you ate. Nobody needs a study for that. It's trivially obvious and follows from the very basics of physics, chemistry, and biology. The notion that we need a study to prove that more food costs more money is laughable to the extreme.

Also see my comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41133399

In non-US countries, where it’s much less expensive, it’s a common experience to spend sufficiently less on food to cover the pen cost

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