According to some sources, at least 1 in 8 of the world population is classified as ‘obese’. Since nobody in any government seems to have thought up a working solution, what do you believe can be done to solve the epidemic?
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- Tehhund@lemmy.worldEnglish2 days
This will be unpopular, but: just stop caring. Let people be whatever size, treat them equally, and don’t sweat it. You may not like that but one way to solve an issue is to realize there is no issue.
Would people be healthier if they weren’t obese? Possibly. The evidence is a little mixed. I’m in the middle where I think not being obese is healthier but the effect is overblown by related factors. People would be healthier if no one drank alcohol but I don’t think banning alcohol is worth it.
(Revealing my biases: I’ve been extremely fit, I’ve also been technically obese, and I’m on a GLP-1 inhibitor because I want to lose weight. But I’m not interested in telling other people how heavy they should be)
Bring on the downvotes, my body is ready.
- 2 days
As you’ve been both fit and technically obese, I suspect you also realize exercise is much harder to do when you’re obese. Not just because moving your body is harder, but because you have less energy and thus it might be much harder to motivate yourself. It’s a vicious cycle where gaining weight is even easier when sedentary and being obese makes it harder to not be sedentary.
And with socialized healthcare in most countries, everyone’s paying the price. I say this as someone currently technically obese as well.
Luckily most people don’t WANT to be obese, so GLP-1 inhibitors are a bit of a godsend. Forcing anyone to lose weight I can’t condone, but giving people the best possible chances to be healthy seems like a no-brainer.
Pay people to lose weight and then pay an even better rate for maintaining a healthy weight
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Cheap access to fresh fruit and veg
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Education for healthy eating starting in childhood
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Public outdoor spaces that are enjoyable to exercise in
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Cheap, frequent public transit to allow everyone to access food and public spaces
If those don’t take care of most of it we can keep going from there.
- faythofdragons@slrpnk.netEnglish3 days
And not just fresh fruit and veg, but a variety of good quality fresh fruit and veg. Red delicious apples are cheap fresh fruit, zucchini is cheap fresh veg, but you won’t enjoy eating your fruit and veg if all you’re getting is nasty apples and zucchini.
3 daysI feel like we could do a lot by simply removing the sales taxes from raw vegetables and non-exotic fruits.
That would be a government subsidy, but it would be a subsidy primed to go towards the consumer.
- faythofdragons@slrpnk.netEnglish3 days
Can’t hurt. The state with the least obesity is Colorado, and they don’t have a sales tax on groceries, but do with candy and stuff.
- ParlimentOfDoom@piefed.zipEnglish3 days
Only 11 states charge sales tax on groceries as it is. And all but 3 of the ones that do, have a reduced rate.
if all you’re getting is nasty apples
Growing up I thought I didn’t prefer apples. It turns out I just don’t like the most common apple that was fed to me. “Red Delicious” is false advertising. Fuji, Jazz, Honeycrisp, Yellow Delicious, Pink Lady, are all far far superior. I’ll even eat a Gala apple even thought those are just okay. Red Delicious apples are trash tier apples.
Bro what are you talking about zuchcineine and appel GOOD you are the avatar of the demiurge
I like red delicious apples. I like all varieties of apples. The hate comes from familiarity and snobbery. It’s like coffee, cigars, and wine--marketing and price is the only real difference. One isn’t worse than the other, we’re just taught that. Every variety of apple can become mealy if left tool long, but people associate that with RD because that’s the apple they had as kids and sometimes they were mealy, and kids are very sensitive to differences in their food.
- faythofdragons@slrpnk.netEnglish2 days
Nah, the hate for Red Delicious comes from the fact that they’ve been bred to look good and have a long shelf life instead of having good flavor. They used to taste better, but due to the industrialization of farming, orchards were paid more for better looking apples. Eventually, the cultivar developed into the modern Red Delicious, which has a thick skin and starchy texture that resists bruising during machine handling.
I posted my comment before seeing yours and my experience is a close match to what you describe.
One isn’t worse than the other, we’re just taught that.
Hard disagree. Even as an adult a Red Delicious is a disappointment. I don’t turn down free apples when offered. I always turn down Red Delicious.
- rowinxavier@lemmy.worldEnglish3 days
A thing most people don’t get is that knowledge of how to prepare food and the time to actually do it are also key. My parents could cook 3 meals between them and poorly at that. I didn’t know anything about how to use a knife including the most basic things like sharp knives being less dangerous than blunt ones. I have learned later in life and I am fairly accomplished in the kitchen, including making a roux, making passata from scratch, fermenting and pickling vegetables, making yoghurt, making adaptable stir fry dishes, making stews and soups, and all manner of other things like breads and pâté. None of those things were taught to me by my parents or through schooling. All the access in the world wouldn’t make me able to use chicken liver without making it chalky and nasty, or cook a steak without ruining it.
- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish2 days
Cheap access to fresh fruit and veg
Won’t work. In my hospital cafeteria at lunch, med staff is lined up at the salad bar, patients line up at the deep fryer. People get a plate of fries and pour gravy over it and call that a meal.
Why does your hospital have a deep fryer to begin with? I’m sure if they set out a pile of low cost cocaine they’d consume that as well, it’s silly to offer people addictive foods and then turn your nose up at them when they eat them; especially in the context of being in the middle of what is probably one of the most stressful events of their lives and likely wanting familiar comfort food.
Anyway, the only difference between you/your colleagues and your patients is covered by my second point: education.
- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish2 days
Why does your hospital have a deep fryer to begin with?
Because the cafeteria needs to stay open and patients demand it. If we didn’t have shit to feed idiots, idiots would order shit in. You cannot force people to eat well.
If you’re just reading the first sentence of everything I type I don’t see a reason to continue
- 2 days
Fruit and vegetables are already cheaper than whatever atuff their faces with.
It’s a very good suggestion, but do you think any government right now would push for that? Not disagreeing with you, just wondering about the feasibility of such ideas?
Those are two separate questions, without a strong public push for those things it’s unlikely governments will do it of their own accord unless they’re specifically trying to cut healthcare costs. But there are places with the things listed; you can’t go anywhere in Central America without running into a fruit cart, cities with good public transit exist, and places with public spaces that encourage exercise exist, programs to educate the public about healthy eating exist. Each thing is individually accomplishable.
- BlameThePeacock@lemmy.caEnglish3 days
Nah. There’s not really any significant benefit to making such changes from a government perspective.
Nah, can do stuff like the UK did - taxing sugar - so that instead of getting less income from removing sales tax, it’d be more income from new tax
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Treating it like the multifaceted issue it is instead of a moral failing would be a start.
In the US that would mean labor laws which favor the human instead of the business. With hours that allow more daily personal time and pay that allows prosperity even at minimum wages. These things would take care of most people.
It would also mean medical treatment being available without burdensome cost, and with consideration to it being a mental hurdle like addiction and destigmatizing seeking aid for it in that manner. Universal healthcare removing the need/demand for private and employment tied insurance would help this as well.
There are many more facets, and facets within facets to all of this, but from a mile high view I think this would help a lot.
Switch to Scientific Socialism where people aren’t overworked and in deep debt over shitty capitalism.
Whats the link? Stress, obviously.
- 2 days
People were also severely stressed in the centuries past (remember, the 8 hour workday is a recent invention). Less stress helps for sure, but the availability of calorie-dense food engineered to be delicious is probably even worse.
- sugarfoot00@lemmy.caEnglish2 days
Then meat being made largely unaffordable by the inflation crisis ought to bend the curve.
- 3 days
Eating the rich has been shown to have a positive impact on weight loss and health in general.
Seriously though, this is the answer. Obesity is a systemic problem.
- skooma_king@piefed.socialEnglish3 days
Also terrible for cholesterol. Have you seen what they’ve been eating?
Eating cholesterol doesn’t raise average blood cholesterol levels, it only spikes it for a few hours. The body adjusts.
The rich are taking better care of themselves these days, because they’re hoping to live long enough to reach longevity therapies, and eventually, immortality therapies, which they will very much keep to themselves.
- PlzGibHugs@piefed.caEnglish2 days
Theres a whole host of issues, many of which are already mentioned, but two other big ones are treating it more as a health issue rather than a moral one, and improving healthcare - especially mental health care.
People don’t realize, but a lot of obesity cases are tied into other health issues - especially mental health. This is doubly true for more extreme cases. For a very simple example, those who are neurodivergent often struggle with specific stimulations including food textures (limiting food options), especially in combination with food deserts or areas with little selection. On the other hand, this can often be improved or worked around with medication and/or therapy. Medication such as antidepressants or antipsychotics causing weight gain is another very common example, and while it isn’t as easy to avoid, better medical support can make it easier to manage, especially if you need to change diet as a result. For a more extreme example, trauma is very closely tied to weight gain and eating disorders. Watch any episode of My Six-Hundred Pound Life (or better yet, don’t), and you’ll notice that almost all of them have significant trauma. For example, childhood abuse can lead to difficulty self-regulating, or sexual abuse can cause someone to feel that being “”“ugly”“” will help prevent future assaults. These examples just scratch the surface too, and things only gen messier when you have comorbid conditions. Just imagine, for example, someone with OCD affecting how they eat, depression treated with a weight-gain causing medication, and PMOS (a hormonal issue common in women, which often makes it extremely difficult to lose weight). Doctors often ignore or struggle to treat any of these individually, nonetheless all three together, and thats before we open the conversation around affordability.
Given this, and just how sensitive and defensive humans are in general, that makes it all-the-more important that we treat people respectfully and kindly. Even ignoring basic decentcy, demonizing or mocking people for their weight delegitimises efforts to change systematic barriers, makes accessing care more difficult or unfriendly, often wastes time or confuses with “advice” that is unhelpful or outright destructive given the context of someone’s medical background (I.E. telling someone with an eating disorder to control their eating more), and increases stress, which in turn, makes medical issues worse and harder to cope with. Instead, if we treat it as a medical issue, we avoid all of this and stop moralising or hurting people already struggling.
Is BMI perfect? No. But most people who cite its shortcomings pretend that the edge cases like extremely muscular athletes have any relevance to most of the population.
I can tell you what I did. I went from 92 kilos to 69 kilos in a year.
- Nearly removed all carbs from my diet
- Increased diet to include vegetables and chicken and eggs
- Removed artificial sugar
- Removed all apps which allowed food delivery
- Went to gym 5 days a week
- Told myself everyday “trust the process”
I started noticing changes after 3 months.
Now how do you convert this into government policy? That is a huge problem altogether. Long term thinking + strong regulations. Even if you try something like this, you will be ridiculed for suggesting government overreach. At the end of the day, a diet is a personal choice.
- 2 days
Free healthcare including counseling, free gyms, shorter work weeks to give people more time for activities, and subsidize healthy foods so they’re more affordable.
Thanks for highlighting counseling. I think people kind of ignore/underestimate the mental aspect of trying to be fit. A true long-lasting healthy life needs its ground work to be based on sustainable habits. It needs to be taught that fitness isn’t what you do for 1 hour in the gym, but the full 24 hours in your day. At the same time, fitness isn’t torturing your body. You need to reward yourself from time to time (but within limits).
- 2 days
I’d like to add that this education and building of habits should start in grade school.
This works, I did it too. I lost 65 pounds in six months, and It’s been gone for over ten years now.
But, that doesn’t make profits for the rich and takes effort, so they made a drug instead.
If you reduce obesity, how will healthcare insurance companies survive? Won’t someone think about the poor billionaire CEOs?
Well it would require a multi step and branching plan. Obvious you’d have to communicate your plan to other people to get them on board.
But obesity probably genetic. Like every human has the capacity to get obese if they have the processed food. You could edit their genes with crisper
People don’t realize* that processed food is engineered to make you eat more of it. You’ll also feel like shit for at least 3 days if you start eating fresh foods and you will crave the junk (cuz it’s made to be that way), but it’s worth it. The price is about the same to eat if you make it from scratch, but it’s so much easier than you think. Your body will thank you. Also, if you’re craving something sweet, drink water.
Examples:
Soup
- boil a bunch of veggies and you get veggie stock.
- Boil the bones of your rotisserie chicken and you get chicken stock.
- Microwave a potato and put it in a pan with your sauteed veggies, then add milk. You now have cream of type soups
Grill
- veggies
- meat
- seafood
Baking
- cut up your veggies and put a whole chicken in there. Cook for awhile, then you have 3 or 4 meals of different varieties. Here’s an example recipe, but you can do any herb or veggies you like. https://simply-delicious-food.com/oven-roasted-whole-chicken/
These are just few.
lol. I meant his wife’s vegan detox diet at the end (the one above’s obviously not vegan, it just reminded me of the concept) obviously I didn’t mean the main diet of that film…
In any case, I much preferred Tom Naughton’s Fat Head
“Honey, I have chest pains! Quick! Get a tripod!!!” XD
- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish2 days
his wife’s vegan detox diet
detox diets are bullshit. Just stop eating crap. Spurlock’s wife stopped being vegan and the cult almost crucified her.
And he died of cancer. They say it didn’t have anything to do with the diet, but it could have
- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish2 days
He had testicular cancer, but he was also a huge alcoholic. He didn’t die of cancer but his publicist would only admit to “cancer related complications”.
Interesting. I’ve never heard what kind of cancer he had, can you provide me a link that says it was testicular?
Oh sorry, lol, I didn’t understand what you were saying. You can have junk in moderation, but processed food companies make it really hard on everyone to do anything in moderation.
Have you seen Fat Head by Tom Naughton? If you liked the Spurlock one, watch that one (it’s kind of a refute with comedy)
No, we’ve been looking for new things to watch. I’ll look for it. We just got done with Widow’s Bay. Boy does that deserve the hype.
It’s on Tubi. Just stick an American VPN on (unless you live in America of course)
If it weren’t taboo, people would for sure just buy mobility scooters and ride around in those all day.
- SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.caEnglish2 days
Have you never been to Florida or any state fair in the USA? No one walks, walking is for suckers.
