I do think one thing that libertarians need to contend with a bit more seriously is the obvious tension pointed out here.
Entrepreneurs have built out huge companies based on serving all the classic biblical vices. Gluttony, Envy, Lust, Gambling, Sloth, Drugs & Alcohol, etc. The availability & quality of indulging in those vices has gone way up, the cost has gone way down. As a high conscientious individual, the maximum-liberty standpoint is very compatible with me. But it obviously has serious deleterious impact on a large portion of society, especially once any social pressure has disappeared to avoid them. The result is a population that is less productive, more unhealthy, more unhappy. It's like the narrative behind the fall of Rome.
I agree. I struggle with this tension myself. In my head, my ideology kinda swings back and forth between libertarian and totalitarianism. I think a society that forces people to be productive, eat healthy and avoid excess drugs and alcohol can produce higher utility / average happiness than a society that allows people to drink as much as they want, eat as much as they want and be as lazy as they want.
The struggle is: How can you make a society that actually forces people to make good decisions? For example, I thought of a calorie ration card system. But sometimes people buy in bulk. How do you know somebody is buying a 20,000 calorie bag of rice to consume today, this week or over the course of 3 months? And us fatties will find away to cheat the system, anyway. They could buy excess calories from anorexics, for example.
Or take smoking for example, the government could throw all smokers in a sort of boot camp for a week till they kick the habit. But there would be such an incentive to smuggle cigarettes in!
Perhaps the solution is more libertarianism: Allow people to enter into contracts whereby they enter a legally-binding agreement to be locked away for a week if they fail a nicotine test, for instance.
Or lose money if they fail to lose weight. Hey, there already is something for that: HealthyWage!
The fall of Rome came from being militarily unprepared and fiscally irresponsible. It was a question of taxation, monetary policy and military affairs. Drugs, gambling and the other silly things you write played no role whatsoever. Where are you getting this?
The claim that “anyone can get thin by making different choices” was nonsense until the introduction of GLP-1 drugs. NOW it’s at least plausible - or will be as drugs in that category proliferate and cost comes down. The fact that most people can easily lose weight by making the “different choice” to take a drug that changes their setpoint confirms there exist biological processes which affect it.
It seems plausible that most people *could have been* thin by making different choices but once they get fat that screws up the metabolism in ways such that the body wants to keep the fat it already has - losing weight is harder than gaining it so weight tends to ratchet up over time absent heroic effort of will to avoid temptation, hunger and general food obsession…or trivial application of Tirzepatide to make the food noise go away.
They don’t work by changing the “set point.” They work as appetite suppressants. Most people who take these drugs cannot physically eat as much. At least some of those who have severe gastrointestinal side effects experience them because they try to eat as much as they did before.
I’m currently taking Tirzepatide and it’s great! I’ve been losing about a pound a week for the last few months. Side effects are mild, mainly a slightly increased tendency to acid reflux and occasional constipation. Direct effects are that I feel more full with less food so can easily eat smaller/fewer meals. Less hungry, less focused on food, and when I crave something I’m satisfied with a very small amount of it.
So far it seems like the perfect drug for weight loss.
The rapid and enormous growth in obesity rates in the USA does cry out for an explanation. Given the large personal benefits to being in shape, I am genuinely confused about what the primary driving factors could be to lead to such a drastic change.
The explanation I've seen recently from intelligentsia is that it's a result of people being wealthier, but it seems absurd to claim that as a top factor. Certainly we're wealthier today, but I don't think most people in the USA in 1960 had their food intake limited by income.
The RFK explanation is that it's the food industry, a more charitable take being that scientists and engineers have done their optimization on processed food to fool our body into desiring them well past the point of satiation. Such foods did not exist in the past, and as their market penetration increased and consumers had families and introduced those foods to their families as the normal way to eat, it went from opt-in to opt-out. That explanation seems like the most plausible top driver to me.
If that's the primary cause, then eating less and exercising more would not actually be a good solution. You would need to change the kinds of foods you consume as the primary intervention.
Hmmm... I'm not so sure. I think this hwhole "highly-processed" thing is just a synonym for complicated recipe. Not everything with a complicated recipe is delicious and begging us to eat more and more. Unflavoured multivitamins, for example are highly processed but I don't feel the urge to consume the hwhole bottle right away.
I think we have more options for delicious food now. But that's a good thing. We've always had delicious food, in the past, though. Like honey. We've had honey for thousands of years!
There is always a temptation to keep eating delicious food even hwhen we're not hungry. Although, it is hard to eat delicious food hwhen we're absolutely stuffed. Hence, part of my weight loss strategy: Absolutely STUFF myself with vegetables and carbonated water to the point where the thought of eating another bite is just nauseating. Hard to crave Papa John's then! Haha!
I think maybe part of the reason for the rise in obesity: Starchy staple foods. i.e. Bread and potatoes for Americans. Rice and noodles for Asians. Etc. Look, if you're a starving Filipino out in the province and rice is all you can afford, by all means: eat rice. I recommend genetically-engineered "golden rice" with added vitamin A. But for most of us, we can probably afford better. But we are programmed to eat more food as we can afford more. Including our staple "comfort" foods. i.e. They are a normal good. This made sense for most of history and still makes sense for most of the world. But WE REALLY SHOULD BE TREATING STARCHY STAPLE FOODS AS INFERIOR GOODS!!! And consume LESS of them as our income increases. Replacing them with high-protein foods.
But this could be a big jump for some. For some in the global-lower-middle-class, including some low-income Americans, they CAN afford MORE bread and/or MORE chips and/or fries, but they simply can't afford to replace the bread, chips and fries with veggies and meat.
For many of us, though, we CAN afford to replace bread, chips, fries and rice with veggies and meat, just old habits die hard! Especially old habits that are thousands of years old!
I agree that foods can be highly processed or entirely synthetic and still be good for you. I use protein powder for instance.
However, I argue that foods driving the obesity epidemic are not rice and potatoes, but foods highly processed to optimize for consumption. Rice eating cultures don’t have the same problem with obesity, although there are many other confounding factors.
One interesting stat - in India and Brazil, 95% of potatoes consumed are “table potatoes” ( cooked and eaten directly). In the US, 65% of potatoes are consumed as French fries and potato chips.
My guess is that poor people are more likely to be obese than rich people. I don't think affordability is a primary cause.
As for switching foods: My weight was creeping up there about 15 years ago and I stopped eating processed foods. Eating foods we used to eat 50 years ago FTW.
Car dependent suburbia plus easy access to extremely calorie-dense, extraordinarily cheap food always seemed like a pretty plausible explanation to me, and one that differentiates the US from the rest of the world.
I understand there would be a lag time, but it looks like 37% of adults lived in suburbs/exurbs in 1960. 40% in 1980. 52% in 2020. That doesn’t get close to lining up with the obesity growth curve.
No, not anyone can. You are completely ignoring the real reason of obesity: comfort eating as a way to cope with anxiety and depression. Which is behind most addictions - they start as self-medication. You start with the assumption of infinite willpower and agency and ignore how depression saps precisely agency.
But I shouldn't be surprised. Libertarians are basically the aristocracy of executive function. People with infinite self-control. People become libertarians because if the grocery stores sold cocaine, they would be strong enough to resist buying it. Everybody else is not a libertarian because we do not trust ourselves that much - and have good reasons to.
As a morbidly obese person, I think I have something valuable to contribute to this discussion. Yay! One advantage of being obese! I've lost weight before. A lot of weight. Then, gained it all back and then some. Then, lost a lot of weight again. Then, gained it all back again. And then some!
I think it's absolutely possible for an obese person to lose weight. Just as it's absolutely possible for an alcoholic to stop drinking or a drug addict to stop using drugs. It seems ridiculously easy from the outside looking in: "hWhat do you mean, you can't stop drinking? Just put down the #%$ing bottle!"
But, have you never had any bad habits, Dr. Caplan? Yes, it's possible to change. But it's hard! The best analogy I've seen for this comes from the Berenstain Bears! In The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Habit (Berenstain and Berenstain, 1986), Mama Bear is pushing a hWheelbarrow. Over time, the weight of the wheelbarrow on it's one hwheel has formed a "rut" (a groove in the dirt). It's possible to push the hwheelbarrow out of the rut, but it's much easier to keep the hwheelbarrow in the rut and push it through the rut. Mama Bear explains that a bad habit is like being in a rut.
Likewise, I think it's easy for someone hwho has never tried Heroin to "just say no" but it can be incredibly difficult for someone who is already in that rut to get out of it.
That being said, I think the idea that it's easy to make better choices, may be a useful lie. As it may cause more people to try. And at least some of them will succeed. As such, it's a more useful lie than: "It is impossible to make better choices".
Likewise with depression, for example. Some think it's cruel to tell people with depression that they can just "get over it" and "choose to be happy". I think it's far crueler to tell them it's not their fault, cause this implies there's nothing they can do to overcome it, leading many to not even try and condemning many to chronic depression!
I do think there's a genetic component to all this. Didn't you find that, yourself, sir? Some people are more genetically inclined to be obese. Some people are more genetically inclined to be alcoholic. But they are not doomed to be obese or alcoholic. Just it will be harder for them to NOT be alcoholic or obese than the average person. We all have our cross to bear.
Knowing this, I will try 10 times as hard to not be obese, to set a good example for my daughter and to instill good eating habits in her, so that she avoids obesity. Unfortunately, I am divorced and my daughter lives with her mother in the Philippines. At least, for now. And although we're still on "speaking terms", we're not quite on the same page with regards to my daughter's nutrition. I think she should get used to a low-starch diet: Little to NO rice, ulam lang (meat, sauce and veggies). Her mother feeds her like a cup of rice with every meal and expects her to finish it. (She's just shy of 3 years old.) BUT almost NEVER allows her to have any sugar. Like once a quarter. I agree that sugar should be consumed sparingly but not THAT sparingly! Once a week is fine. Haaaay naku!
Your attitude toward vaccines seamlessly reflects my own attitude, circa 2020. Government regulators, I reasoned, would not encourage anything unsafe. Then I witnessed my wife’s best friend have a horrible reaction to a covid shot. Anecdata, you would say. An isolated example.
Then I read RFK Jr’s, “The Real Anthony Fauci.” I began to understand the huge amounts of money involved. I read how government regulatory agencies have been captured by big pharma. I understood how it is difficult for regulatory agencies to be truly independent, and render unbiased decisions about safety. It’s a playbook that has been followed by other big businesses, such as big oil companies, regarding environmental issues, and big tobacco, regarding cancer.
RFK Jr’s book changed my mind. It would change your mind, too, if you accepted the challenge to be open to a new idea.
My experience shows that changing to a healthy lifestyle is possible and beneficial. Many years ago I weighed 325 pounds, smoked 2 1/2 packs a day, drank excessively, and didn't exercise. I had type 2 diabetes and such a severe case of COPD that a breathing test indicated that I was at risk of early death. I became sufficiently concerned to change my lifestyle. I quit smoking, almost eliminated drinking, went on a reduced-calorie diet of exclusively healthy foods, and began exercising. Now I weigh 155 pounds. and no longer have diabetes. I still have COPD, but my breathing is much better than it was. My doctor says I'm in excellent health for my age (I'm 81) and that I look 20 years younger than I am.
Why are we always so reluctant to “blame the victim”?!
I have actually seen a morbidly obese person lose over 100 pounds by making better choices (trade-offs).
Conversely, I have watched with amazement and horror as my own brother self-destructed time and again by making bad choice after bad choice (trade-offs).
My father would punish me every time I said “I can’t” do something. I now understand his point.
I don’t usually read the comments but I did and was tempted to respond (unkindly if I’m being honest). But instead I am writing this comment.
I recently attended my dear friend’s funeral. She died from a freak accident (her large puppy caused her to fall). She suffered a trauma from a broken leg that resulted in sepsis; exploratory surgery confirmed that her system was necrotic. Her family could only wait for her death hours later.
Why did this happen? If you ask her mother: “God needed another angel in Heaven.” Social Desirability Bias would require me to say: “Bad luck” or “We may never know, but it wasn’t her fault.”
But the truth is it was my friend’s fault. She was at least 100 pounds overweight, which compromised her overall health. Had she not been morbidly obese, perhaps had she been just somewhat overweight, this would not have happened.
Human beings do not live in a deterministic universe. We have free will. We can always make different choices if we are willing to pay the costs. My dearest friend forfeited 25 years of her life (she was 57) because she was unwilling (NOT unable) to make a costly trade-off.
You can say the same thing about drinking alcohol, driving recklessly or not taking proper precautions while traveling (small attractive women cutting through allies at 3am is something I always find fascinating). We all have choices to make. We pay the consequences of our actions.
You could extend this reasoning to many other life situations. You could tell a toddler to stop having a tantrum because it is so easy: you just stop screaming and crying and be happy, anyone can do it! Why some people are feeling anxious depressed all the time? Just stop being anxious depressed and you will be all set! Why is a person with Prader Willi syndrome continues to overeat despite being severely obese? He should just stop eating! Well the man with Prader Willi has a genetic mutation that among other things causes excessive appetite, they always feel hungry despite being severely obese and they can't help eating to het rid of the uncomfortable feeling of hunger. Perhaps some people who are obese have a genetic makeup that makes them prone to overheating and they genetically lack the willpower to stop. There are certainly people there who make bad choices causing their problems, but most Oblomovs are not entirely responsible for their own problems. It is complicated, monocausal explanations of most things are wrong.
This is a deeply silly post and set of claims. Just to start with the most obvious one, the time and effort required to get vaccinated versus the time and effort required to lose weight are radically different propositions. It’s a ludicrous analogy, and the attached argument is equally sloppy.
As a morbidly obese man I am deeply offended at your repeated use of facts and linear thinking, a repressive, Euro-centric tool of colonial repression, like mass incarceration or mathematics. Did you know that there are obese people of color? I know you did, so obviously you are a racist and want genocide. That is why we who are against racism and genocide must agree that unlimited free donuts are a requirement for human fulfillment and basic human rights. There will be those who prefer to follow Hitler and be against free donuts for all, but ethical, progressive people will be on the right side of history.
Resisting hunger is hard. Hunger is an incredibly basic and deep seated drive.
I literally cannot eat enough to get fat. I've been within 20 lbs of the same weight I was in high school my whole life. If I eat too much I get nauseated and sick. If I stop exercising for a while my appetite decreases.
If there is something environmental that is literally affecting some people's hunger drive, they could be 10x hungrier than the rest of us. Which may mean they need 100x more willpower to compensate.
I don't think it's necessarily fair for thin people or for those of us who don't struggle with our weight to assume it is easy for everyone. Look at conditions like prader willi syndrome... It's obviously biologically possible for appetite issues to reliably cause obesity.
Regarding weight loss, it is much easier to keep from getting obese via proper diet and exercise. It is much harder to lose significant amounts of weight through once a person is already obese. Plus many individuals start the path towards obesity while they are still children and their brain is not fully formed.
Willpower works great for keeping one from getting obese, but it is often not enough to reverse obesity. The human body and brain is designed to conserve energy.
“Just roll up your sleeve and let the doctor stick you with the needle.” Most of the vaccinations I receive are delivered by a nurse, often not even an RN.
I do think one thing that libertarians need to contend with a bit more seriously is the obvious tension pointed out here.
Entrepreneurs have built out huge companies based on serving all the classic biblical vices. Gluttony, Envy, Lust, Gambling, Sloth, Drugs & Alcohol, etc. The availability & quality of indulging in those vices has gone way up, the cost has gone way down. As a high conscientious individual, the maximum-liberty standpoint is very compatible with me. But it obviously has serious deleterious impact on a large portion of society, especially once any social pressure has disappeared to avoid them. The result is a population that is less productive, more unhealthy, more unhappy. It's like the narrative behind the fall of Rome.
How does libertarianism address this problem?
I agree. I struggle with this tension myself. In my head, my ideology kinda swings back and forth between libertarian and totalitarianism. I think a society that forces people to be productive, eat healthy and avoid excess drugs and alcohol can produce higher utility / average happiness than a society that allows people to drink as much as they want, eat as much as they want and be as lazy as they want.
The struggle is: How can you make a society that actually forces people to make good decisions? For example, I thought of a calorie ration card system. But sometimes people buy in bulk. How do you know somebody is buying a 20,000 calorie bag of rice to consume today, this week or over the course of 3 months? And us fatties will find away to cheat the system, anyway. They could buy excess calories from anorexics, for example.
Or take smoking for example, the government could throw all smokers in a sort of boot camp for a week till they kick the habit. But there would be such an incentive to smuggle cigarettes in!
Perhaps the solution is more libertarianism: Allow people to enter into contracts whereby they enter a legally-binding agreement to be locked away for a week if they fail a nicotine test, for instance.
Or lose money if they fail to lose weight. Hey, there already is something for that: HealthyWage!
The fall of Rome came from being militarily unprepared and fiscally irresponsible. It was a question of taxation, monetary policy and military affairs. Drugs, gambling and the other silly things you write played no role whatsoever. Where are you getting this?
The claim that “anyone can get thin by making different choices” was nonsense until the introduction of GLP-1 drugs. NOW it’s at least plausible - or will be as drugs in that category proliferate and cost comes down. The fact that most people can easily lose weight by making the “different choice” to take a drug that changes their setpoint confirms there exist biological processes which affect it.
It seems plausible that most people *could have been* thin by making different choices but once they get fat that screws up the metabolism in ways such that the body wants to keep the fat it already has - losing weight is harder than gaining it so weight tends to ratchet up over time absent heroic effort of will to avoid temptation, hunger and general food obsession…or trivial application of Tirzepatide to make the food noise go away.
They don’t work by changing the “set point.” They work as appetite suppressants. Most people who take these drugs cannot physically eat as much. At least some of those who have severe gastrointestinal side effects experience them because they try to eat as much as they did before.
Aside from that nitpick, these are miracle drugs.
Have tried taking them? I have. I would prefer fentanyl. Prescribe me some Dexedrine or Adderall. Those will not make me sick. Ozempic is dreadful.
I’m currently taking Tirzepatide and it’s great! I’ve been losing about a pound a week for the last few months. Side effects are mild, mainly a slightly increased tendency to acid reflux and occasional constipation. Direct effects are that I feel more full with less food so can easily eat smaller/fewer meals. Less hungry, less focused on food, and when I crave something I’m satisfied with a very small amount of it.
So far it seems like the perfect drug for weight loss.
The rapid and enormous growth in obesity rates in the USA does cry out for an explanation. Given the large personal benefits to being in shape, I am genuinely confused about what the primary driving factors could be to lead to such a drastic change.
The explanation I've seen recently from intelligentsia is that it's a result of people being wealthier, but it seems absurd to claim that as a top factor. Certainly we're wealthier today, but I don't think most people in the USA in 1960 had their food intake limited by income.
The RFK explanation is that it's the food industry, a more charitable take being that scientists and engineers have done their optimization on processed food to fool our body into desiring them well past the point of satiation. Such foods did not exist in the past, and as their market penetration increased and consumers had families and introduced those foods to their families as the normal way to eat, it went from opt-in to opt-out. That explanation seems like the most plausible top driver to me.
If that's the primary cause, then eating less and exercising more would not actually be a good solution. You would need to change the kinds of foods you consume as the primary intervention.
Hmmm... I'm not so sure. I think this hwhole "highly-processed" thing is just a synonym for complicated recipe. Not everything with a complicated recipe is delicious and begging us to eat more and more. Unflavoured multivitamins, for example are highly processed but I don't feel the urge to consume the hwhole bottle right away.
I think we have more options for delicious food now. But that's a good thing. We've always had delicious food, in the past, though. Like honey. We've had honey for thousands of years!
There is always a temptation to keep eating delicious food even hwhen we're not hungry. Although, it is hard to eat delicious food hwhen we're absolutely stuffed. Hence, part of my weight loss strategy: Absolutely STUFF myself with vegetables and carbonated water to the point where the thought of eating another bite is just nauseating. Hard to crave Papa John's then! Haha!
I think maybe part of the reason for the rise in obesity: Starchy staple foods. i.e. Bread and potatoes for Americans. Rice and noodles for Asians. Etc. Look, if you're a starving Filipino out in the province and rice is all you can afford, by all means: eat rice. I recommend genetically-engineered "golden rice" with added vitamin A. But for most of us, we can probably afford better. But we are programmed to eat more food as we can afford more. Including our staple "comfort" foods. i.e. They are a normal good. This made sense for most of history and still makes sense for most of the world. But WE REALLY SHOULD BE TREATING STARCHY STAPLE FOODS AS INFERIOR GOODS!!! And consume LESS of them as our income increases. Replacing them with high-protein foods.
But this could be a big jump for some. For some in the global-lower-middle-class, including some low-income Americans, they CAN afford MORE bread and/or MORE chips and/or fries, but they simply can't afford to replace the bread, chips and fries with veggies and meat.
For many of us, though, we CAN afford to replace bread, chips, fries and rice with veggies and meat, just old habits die hard! Especially old habits that are thousands of years old!
I agree that foods can be highly processed or entirely synthetic and still be good for you. I use protein powder for instance.
However, I argue that foods driving the obesity epidemic are not rice and potatoes, but foods highly processed to optimize for consumption. Rice eating cultures don’t have the same problem with obesity, although there are many other confounding factors.
One interesting stat - in India and Brazil, 95% of potatoes consumed are “table potatoes” ( cooked and eaten directly). In the US, 65% of potatoes are consumed as French fries and potato chips.
The differences among societies and between time periods begs for a better explanation.
My guess is that poor people are more likely to be obese than rich people. I don't think affordability is a primary cause.
As for switching foods: My weight was creeping up there about 15 years ago and I stopped eating processed foods. Eating foods we used to eat 50 years ago FTW.
Car dependent suburbia plus easy access to extremely calorie-dense, extraordinarily cheap food always seemed like a pretty plausible explanation to me, and one that differentiates the US from the rest of the world.
I understand there would be a lag time, but it looks like 37% of adults lived in suburbs/exurbs in 1960. 40% in 1980. 52% in 2020. That doesn’t get close to lining up with the obesity growth curve.
No, not anyone can. You are completely ignoring the real reason of obesity: comfort eating as a way to cope with anxiety and depression. Which is behind most addictions - they start as self-medication. You start with the assumption of infinite willpower and agency and ignore how depression saps precisely agency.
But I shouldn't be surprised. Libertarians are basically the aristocracy of executive function. People with infinite self-control. People become libertarians because if the grocery stores sold cocaine, they would be strong enough to resist buying it. Everybody else is not a libertarian because we do not trust ourselves that much - and have good reasons to.
As a morbidly obese person, I think I have something valuable to contribute to this discussion. Yay! One advantage of being obese! I've lost weight before. A lot of weight. Then, gained it all back and then some. Then, lost a lot of weight again. Then, gained it all back again. And then some!
I think it's absolutely possible for an obese person to lose weight. Just as it's absolutely possible for an alcoholic to stop drinking or a drug addict to stop using drugs. It seems ridiculously easy from the outside looking in: "hWhat do you mean, you can't stop drinking? Just put down the #%$ing bottle!"
But, have you never had any bad habits, Dr. Caplan? Yes, it's possible to change. But it's hard! The best analogy I've seen for this comes from the Berenstain Bears! In The Berenstain Bears and the Bad Habit (Berenstain and Berenstain, 1986), Mama Bear is pushing a hWheelbarrow. Over time, the weight of the wheelbarrow on it's one hwheel has formed a "rut" (a groove in the dirt). It's possible to push the hwheelbarrow out of the rut, but it's much easier to keep the hwheelbarrow in the rut and push it through the rut. Mama Bear explains that a bad habit is like being in a rut.
Likewise, I think it's easy for someone hwho has never tried Heroin to "just say no" but it can be incredibly difficult for someone who is already in that rut to get out of it.
That being said, I think the idea that it's easy to make better choices, may be a useful lie. As it may cause more people to try. And at least some of them will succeed. As such, it's a more useful lie than: "It is impossible to make better choices".
Likewise with depression, for example. Some think it's cruel to tell people with depression that they can just "get over it" and "choose to be happy". I think it's far crueler to tell them it's not their fault, cause this implies there's nothing they can do to overcome it, leading many to not even try and condemning many to chronic depression!
I do think there's a genetic component to all this. Didn't you find that, yourself, sir? Some people are more genetically inclined to be obese. Some people are more genetically inclined to be alcoholic. But they are not doomed to be obese or alcoholic. Just it will be harder for them to NOT be alcoholic or obese than the average person. We all have our cross to bear.
Knowing this, I will try 10 times as hard to not be obese, to set a good example for my daughter and to instill good eating habits in her, so that she avoids obesity. Unfortunately, I am divorced and my daughter lives with her mother in the Philippines. At least, for now. And although we're still on "speaking terms", we're not quite on the same page with regards to my daughter's nutrition. I think she should get used to a low-starch diet: Little to NO rice, ulam lang (meat, sauce and veggies). Her mother feeds her like a cup of rice with every meal and expects her to finish it. (She's just shy of 3 years old.) BUT almost NEVER allows her to have any sugar. Like once a quarter. I agree that sugar should be consumed sparingly but not THAT sparingly! Once a week is fine. Haaaay naku!
Your attitude toward vaccines seamlessly reflects my own attitude, circa 2020. Government regulators, I reasoned, would not encourage anything unsafe. Then I witnessed my wife’s best friend have a horrible reaction to a covid shot. Anecdata, you would say. An isolated example.
Then I read RFK Jr’s, “The Real Anthony Fauci.” I began to understand the huge amounts of money involved. I read how government regulatory agencies have been captured by big pharma. I understood how it is difficult for regulatory agencies to be truly independent, and render unbiased decisions about safety. It’s a playbook that has been followed by other big businesses, such as big oil companies, regarding environmental issues, and big tobacco, regarding cancer.
RFK Jr’s book changed my mind. It would change your mind, too, if you accepted the challenge to be open to a new idea.
My experience shows that changing to a healthy lifestyle is possible and beneficial. Many years ago I weighed 325 pounds, smoked 2 1/2 packs a day, drank excessively, and didn't exercise. I had type 2 diabetes and such a severe case of COPD that a breathing test indicated that I was at risk of early death. I became sufficiently concerned to change my lifestyle. I quit smoking, almost eliminated drinking, went on a reduced-calorie diet of exclusively healthy foods, and began exercising. Now I weigh 155 pounds. and no longer have diabetes. I still have COPD, but my breathing is much better than it was. My doctor says I'm in excellent health for my age (I'm 81) and that I look 20 years younger than I am.
Why are we always so reluctant to “blame the victim”?!
I have actually seen a morbidly obese person lose over 100 pounds by making better choices (trade-offs).
Conversely, I have watched with amazement and horror as my own brother self-destructed time and again by making bad choice after bad choice (trade-offs).
My father would punish me every time I said “I can’t” do something. I now understand his point.
I don’t usually read the comments but I did and was tempted to respond (unkindly if I’m being honest). But instead I am writing this comment.
I recently attended my dear friend’s funeral. She died from a freak accident (her large puppy caused her to fall). She suffered a trauma from a broken leg that resulted in sepsis; exploratory surgery confirmed that her system was necrotic. Her family could only wait for her death hours later.
Why did this happen? If you ask her mother: “God needed another angel in Heaven.” Social Desirability Bias would require me to say: “Bad luck” or “We may never know, but it wasn’t her fault.”
But the truth is it was my friend’s fault. She was at least 100 pounds overweight, which compromised her overall health. Had she not been morbidly obese, perhaps had she been just somewhat overweight, this would not have happened.
Human beings do not live in a deterministic universe. We have free will. We can always make different choices if we are willing to pay the costs. My dearest friend forfeited 25 years of her life (she was 57) because she was unwilling (NOT unable) to make a costly trade-off.
You can say the same thing about drinking alcohol, driving recklessly or not taking proper precautions while traveling (small attractive women cutting through allies at 3am is something I always find fascinating). We all have choices to make. We pay the consequences of our actions.
That’s exactly what I tell my adult children. If they learn that lesson I will be able to die without regrets
You could extend this reasoning to many other life situations. You could tell a toddler to stop having a tantrum because it is so easy: you just stop screaming and crying and be happy, anyone can do it! Why some people are feeling anxious depressed all the time? Just stop being anxious depressed and you will be all set! Why is a person with Prader Willi syndrome continues to overeat despite being severely obese? He should just stop eating! Well the man with Prader Willi has a genetic mutation that among other things causes excessive appetite, they always feel hungry despite being severely obese and they can't help eating to het rid of the uncomfortable feeling of hunger. Perhaps some people who are obese have a genetic makeup that makes them prone to overheating and they genetically lack the willpower to stop. There are certainly people there who make bad choices causing their problems, but most Oblomovs are not entirely responsible for their own problems. It is complicated, monocausal explanations of most things are wrong.
This is a deeply silly post and set of claims. Just to start with the most obvious one, the time and effort required to get vaccinated versus the time and effort required to lose weight are radically different propositions. It’s a ludicrous analogy, and the attached argument is equally sloppy.
As a morbidly obese man I am deeply offended at your repeated use of facts and linear thinking, a repressive, Euro-centric tool of colonial repression, like mass incarceration or mathematics. Did you know that there are obese people of color? I know you did, so obviously you are a racist and want genocide. That is why we who are against racism and genocide must agree that unlimited free donuts are a requirement for human fulfillment and basic human rights. There will be those who prefer to follow Hitler and be against free donuts for all, but ethical, progressive people will be on the right side of history.
Resisting hunger is hard. Hunger is an incredibly basic and deep seated drive.
I literally cannot eat enough to get fat. I've been within 20 lbs of the same weight I was in high school my whole life. If I eat too much I get nauseated and sick. If I stop exercising for a while my appetite decreases.
If there is something environmental that is literally affecting some people's hunger drive, they could be 10x hungrier than the rest of us. Which may mean they need 100x more willpower to compensate.
I don't think it's necessarily fair for thin people or for those of us who don't struggle with our weight to assume it is easy for everyone. Look at conditions like prader willi syndrome... It's obviously biologically possible for appetite issues to reliably cause obesity.
I agree that self-help is highly desirable, but:
Regarding weight loss, it is much easier to keep from getting obese via proper diet and exercise. It is much harder to lose significant amounts of weight through once a person is already obese. Plus many individuals start the path towards obesity while they are still children and their brain is not fully formed.
Willpower works great for keeping one from getting obese, but it is often not enough to reverse obesity. The human body and brain is designed to conserve energy.
“Just roll up your sleeve and let the doctor stick you with the needle.” Most of the vaccinations I receive are delivered by a nurse, often not even an RN.