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Comment by toolz | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but a pill is nowhere near as effective at causing weight loss as changing your diet can be.

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Several anti obesity medications had weight loss amounts of 5.9, 4.7, and 4.2kgs.

Average long term weight loss for diet 2.0 or 7.1kgs(only 55% of people responded so huge selective bias could be present)

I think the gap is nonexistent or much closer than you think. It looks like pills are pretty close to as effective at causing weight loss as changing your diet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Management_of_obesity#Medicatio... http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/74/5/579.short

The problem with pills is not immediate efficiency, but keeping the weight after stopping the pills and side effects (such as increased probability of cancer, weakening of teeth, joints and bones, shortening of telomers).

It doesn't have to be "better than diet," per se. Though, I do note that diet has done a lousy job of helping most of the population. And the response that people aren't following the correct diet is missing the point. As that is the point.

That is to say, which do you think you'd have better luck with, convincing a segment of the population to take a pill once a day, or to adopt a diet that will have advantageous results?

Edit: And this ignores that you could go with both, of course.

Unless you're one of the people who have metabolic issues which make being functional in life with a duet that would support weight loss impractical without a pill. People who need to lose weight are often not in perfect health aside from being overweight (sometimes this is either a cause or effect if being overweight in the first place.)

Couldn´t agree more, but how do you convince millions of people to change their diet with the promise that it will reduce their health problems in 20-30 years, saving their country billions of dollar a year in health care costs ?

Tax unhealthy foods. In particular processed foods.

So zero rate fresh vegetables and fruit, and fresh meat if you can manage that with the legal system (because it is processed). Then whack 25% on everything else.

Now.. I shall make the comment to bring the downvotes! But I am tough so I shall do it.

Bacon should be in the 25% tax bracket.

-karma here I come...

upvote for the bacon.

I am afraid that taxes would be a boomerang is this case. The industry will just lower production costs to offset the taxes. Lowering the costs meaning that crap food will be crapier and here we go again...

At least make the tax health-dependent. As a non-overweight person I'd hate to have to pay a premium for any kind of food.

Of course, if the hypothesis is correct, you are painting a bit of a false dichotomy. That is, if these diets are causing issues, you are paying those in longer term rising costs and loss of productivity anyway. Moving it to a monetary tax now could be far cheaper.

What about bacon is a problem exactly?

The latest research indicates sodium and fat are nowhere near as harmful as recently thought, and that high calorie + high carb diets are the biggest culprits by far.

Which makes perfect sense. The obesity problem in America skyrocketed with the expansion not of fat and sodium and bacon consumption - bacon had been consumed in large quantities for decades prior to the obesity boom - but with the extreme increases in sugar consumption, carb consumption, and sedentary lifestyles.

I'd argue bacon should be tax free, because it's far healthier than what most Americans are eating day to day. We should encourage its consumption, for it's low calorie, low carb, low sugar and high protein - which is exactly what we should be encouraging.

Aren't the nitrites in bacon still bad? Not sure why though on the atomic level?

I'm not an expert, but the thing is that Bacon is a preserved meat product and I believe that consumption of preserved meats is associated with high early mortality from a number of conditions including cancer. It's lovely (I love it) but it's apparently, on the latest research, not so good for you.

Also, processed food tax will help pay for the health system!

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