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I don’t think awareness of caloric intake is the problem, there are standardized labels on most foods (especially the bad ones). Most people who are obese know that the calories make them overweight, but they still have the need to eat food — which is what makes obesity a result of addiction. Similarly meth addicts know that meth is bad for them, but they still do it anyways.

How often do people control their own diets? That assumes they buy and cook all their own food, which is only true if you live on your own.

> How often do people control their own diets

Maybe I live in a bubble, but I don’t put stuff in my body unwillingly, so yes I control my diet.

It also isn’t rocket science, I know doughnuts have a shit ton of calories and vegetable shortening which will clkg your arteries, so I don’t eat doughnuts. I don’t have to look at the packaging.

Maybe the missing part is a proper education on nutrition in school, but we live in the age of the internet. All the information is there, you can get meal plans, you can figure out what foods are more likely to put you at risk.

Again, I don’t believe awareness is an issue. People know that chips and doughnuts are bad, but they eat them anyways because they are addicted to food which is engineered to be addictive.

> Maybe I live in a bubble, but I don’t put stuff in my body unwillingly, so yes I control my diet.

The example I'm thinking of is cultures with near-religious obligations to listen to their parents. Like Italian-Americans all act like they'd die if they ever ate less than all of their grandmother's cooking or ever changed any of the traditional recipes. Even though the recipes were all invented in 1970 in NYC and have inhumanly large amounts of carbs.

You don't have to - all the fast food menus I've seen contain caloric information. Right on the menu. People still eat it.

Somewhat similar to how a carton of cigs contains a big warning that says "THIS WILL KILL YOU DO NOT SMOKE THIS UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES"

Welp...

Sure and I didnt say it would replace Ozempics rather it's a substitute that would help a portion of the population.

Yet majority of all people have no idea the amount of calories they eat daily. Im sure being shown this automagically will be valuable data to all people just how they choose to use this optional feature to make changes or not.

> which is what makes obesity a result of addiction.

Obesity is not (in general) a result of addiction.

You're being downvoted as many people who try to count calories fail to achieve meaningful results. From my own experience, weight gain follows a simple progression.

1. Expected high stress work day -> Coffee w/ food item in the morning

2. Stress during the day -> No exercise + large lunch.

3. Post-day -> door dash due to not feeling up for cooking.

4. Sleep -> Get 6 hours of sleep due to not having the energy to maintain bedtime discipline, getting paged, or late night meetings + childcare obligations.

5. Repeat.

This cycle continues for a few months leading to 10-20 pounds of weight gain, followed by a year long push to rebalance life and lose the weight. There is nothing that a magic calorie counter could do for this cycle other than guilt me over my door dash order at the end of the night.

I think of a calorie tracker as a compass as I navigate an overly calorie-dense world that doesn't make us exert ourselves to the point of caloric deficits any longer.

For the aware user, combined with a scale, it helps normalize estimations of calories which can be incredibly deceptive. For example, try getting a group of people to estimate how many calories are in a store-bought muffin or donut, a bowl of nuts, a sweetened coffee drink from a drive-thru, or their typical bowl of a favorite cereal. I'm used to the casual observer's guess being about 1/3 of the true total if you weigh the item and read the label.

So in your scenario, the calorie counter would be a signal that you need to cut portions or cal density if your weight is going in the wrong direction, not unlike how a compass is just a tool if you're lost - you still need to know how to use it.

Im sure it would alert me to the trend, just as the scale does :) the fundamental problem is whether health is being exchanged for another good “stable income.”

No calorie counter will stop a ramen quest after 90 hours of work. Unfortunately, I worked in environments where these stretches were obligatory.

In 2013, my weight was around 48kg, and I increased it to 55kg through fitness and dietary control. In 2016, my body shape reached its peak at 60kg, with a body fat percentage of 12%. In 2022, my weight was 63kg, but my body fat percentage was around 22%. I still managed to regain a weight of around 57kg and a body fat percentage of 18% through fitness and dietary control. I just want to emphasize that controlling diet is very important for shaping the body, and the method of controlling diet is to calculate the calories of food. Only then will you realize what foods you should consume. For example, when you are thirsty but don't want to drink pure water, you want to drink a beverage with a taste like coffee or tea. If you understand the calorie percentage of these foods, you can know that if you choose coffee, it's best to drink an Americano, and if you prefer tea, you can drink almost all types of tea. Even tea is considered beneficial for weight loss. Find tea here,https://teayucafe.com/ The reason why many people fail to achieve their weight change goals by calculating calories is that they cannot persist. Remember, this is a long process.

People seem to be taking it as given that "someone else preparing the food for you" == "the food is more likely to lead to weight gain".

Why should that be? Is it not possible to order healthy food in? If not this would surprise me as it seems a number of people would be seeking this.

I'm asking as I don't have personal experience.

Everyone lives and enjoy life as they choose as they should!

For those who are not interested cutting down daily on what they eat this data would not be valuable to them just as the data their phone captures now how many steps you walked in a day.

Myself I eat Cava bowls for lunch that are less then 600 calories, drink 70 percent water (not consuming calories from what I drink) and unsweet tea (zero calories in tea) with some lemonade to sweeten it a bit as the remainder. Other chains you can find similar meals that are less then 600. If you eat as such and keep at (change ur lifestyle for good) it some weight will be lost if the person wants to as well go for a walk on their lunch break. But again all about to how people want to live and enjoy their lives!

The ordering out tends to correlate with someone not having the energy or discipline to make what they want themselves. That lack of energy leads to caving on food cravings and overeating.

I recently switched from a major tech company to an academic position and lost 5 pounds in the first month. Simply due to lower stress making the healthy habits seem “easy.”

People with poor restraint will remain unfazed.

If what you're suggesting worked, then the horrible cancer pics on cig packs would have long eliminated smoking.

I agree with you. However, smoking rates have gone down, probably in part because of those pictures and awareness campaigns in general

I can't support this with data, but I'd think the increase in price and compounding effect of more and more people quitting, plus absence of smoking in the media, has had more of an effect

I knew several people for whom the pictures were the "final push" to really quit back when they were first introduced. Not sure if it's easy to get good data to separate out all the factors such as cost, in-your-face warnings, etc. because they all happened more or less at the same time.

As an aside, I watched Poor Things this afternoon, and it came with a "Contains Tobacco Depictions" warning at the start. Never seen that before. No warning for the nudity, sex, or profanity.

I did say it will be a substitute to the Ozempics not a replacement.

For those who don't have the will power there's the Ozempics to utilize at their discretion. For those who do have some or a lot of will power to change their lifestyle forever then this is going to be extremely helpful and those types wont be using Ozempics as Im sure such types are using it now.

well for those mid level to have strong restraint this is going to be helpful!

I already do this with chatGPT but i have to do something vs. just living and glasses doing it automatically.