Obesity: A Health crisis or a moral one?

[BenW]

it doesn't matter if they are expensive to manufacture, they are patented and sold by way way more than they cost.

Yeah... That's prettymuch EXACTLY what I just said.
Seriously, do you ever read my posts before you reply to them?

They aren't expensive to manufacture, their selling prices are just insanely inflated.

 

[mallory knox]

honestly i don't read much no.

i tried to but some of them were filled with stuff like "using tax money to save people's lives is stealing money" so it became difficult to deal with it.

besides, multi quoting makes me dizzy.

 

[arbygil]

They can declare bankruptcy. I'm not there to help anyone get money, just accommodation and food. That's something you can't get on the street with ease.

My system has the benefit of providing security for those who want it. Noone has to stay, but if they want to get back no their feet, they've got a shower, cheap clothes which I'll buy for them, and access to a cheap computer with net access to job hunt. In the meantime, they've got food, showers, a bed, and safety. I'm not a charity, I require work for all that. But noone has to.

Very good point. And in that case, they might even try a barter system with thrift stores in town.

 

[Shai Gar]

Very good point. And in that case, they might even try a barter system with thrift stores in town.

With my food? Hell no.

 

[arbygil]

With my food? Hell no.

Lol! No, I meant their abilities, with someone else in town. Or they can trade something they made. If you've trained them to work the land, then they can teach others as well.

 

[Shai Gar]

I'd be using hydroponics, not tilling the land. You get more, quicker, and better that way.

 

[Ophelia]

Some nutritionist are crazy though

"I found out that doctors typically aren't given much training in nutrition and that some so-called nutrition experts are not well qualified in that field. A large sample of physicians were asked how much training they got in nutrition in medical school. The average was less than three hours, with many having only one hour or less. That's out of nearly 3,500 hours of medical training. The truth is that doctors may get their nutrition information from the same newspapers and TV programs we do, and unless they have taken extra training in nutrition, they may not know much more about nutrition than the rest of us."
—Neal Pinckney, M.
“Thousands upon thousands of persons have studied disease. Almost no one has studied health.”

 

[Faye]

Some nutritionist are crazy though

"I found out that doctors typically aren't given much training in nutrition and that some so-called nutrition experts are not well qualified in that field. A large sample of physicians were asked how much training they got in nutrition in medical school. The average was less than three hours, with many having only one hour or less. That's out of nearly 3,500 hours of medical training. The truth is that doctors may get their nutrition information from the same newspapers and TV programs we do, and unless they have taken extra training in nutrition, they may not know much more about nutrition than the rest of us."

 

[Quinlan]

The fundamental premise of "the obesity crisis" and all size based discrimination and prejudice is the deeply ingrained belief that body size is the result of personal choices.

This axiom seems so intuitively true and is beaten into us every day of our lives that it is hard to consider any other alternative, it is as self evident as it comes, it's something that everyone "just knows".

But is there any scientific basis for the axiom that body size is a choice?

We owe it to ourselves both intellectually and morally to explore the alternative hypothesis fully, what we must remember is that almost all of the information we receive through the media comes from a vested interest, the sheer volume on the anti-size side of the argument is so great that we have to take it upon ourselves to explore the alternative hypothesis.

What would you say if I said that your average body weight over your lifetime was as predetermined by your genes as your height?

Dr. Jeffrey M. Friedman, M.D., Ph.D., head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at Rockefeller University:

The commonly held belief that obese people can simply decide to eat less and exercise more to control their weight is “at odds with substantial scientific evidence illuminating a precise and powerful biological system that maintains body weight within a relatively narrow range (10-20 pounds),”

"The heritability of obesity is equivalent to that of height and greater than that of almost every other condition that has been studied,”

In other words your body size is almost entirely based on your genes.

But how can that be true? We all see fatties stuffing their face all the time! Surely they're overeating to get that big?

Not so:

This is just one study of a profusion of others, both clinical and epidemiological, over the past fifty years demonstrating that fat children (and adults) as a group normally eat exactly the same as thin people. Multiple researchers, using a variety of methodologies, have failed to find any meaningful or replicable differences in the caloric intake or eating patterns of the obese compared to the non-obese to explain obesity, concluded David Garner, Ph.D. and Susan Wooley, Ph.D., for example, in their review of some 500 studies on weight in Clinical Psychology Review.

and

http://www.nature.com/index.html?file=/ijo/journal/v28/n10/abs/0802708a.html

Why you see fat people stuffing their faces is due to confirmation bias when you see a skinny person eating a cupcake your brain won't register it as a meaningful event but when you see a fat person eating a cupcake, you can't help but think "they shouldn't be eating that!" and you will remember it.

Canadian researchers looked at the diets of more than 130,000 kids in 34 countries and reported in a recent issue of Obesity Reviews that fat kids even eat the least sweets, and that kids’ body weights had nothing to do with how many fruits, vegetables or soft drinks they consumed.

Overeating is actually incredibly hard for the human body to maintain in the long term and is similar to starvation in many ways (Almost everyone's willpower will fail to maintain it for any meaningful length of time).

Ultimately I thought of this analogy; Greyhounds may be at lower risk for certain diseases than St Bernard's but that doesn't mean you should try and turn a St Bernard's into the size of a greyhound through calorie restriction and exercise, by doing so you'll cause more health problems than you'll fix.

 

[Pristinegirl]

Being overweight is ideal in terms of life expectancy, obese and "normal/healthy" are equal and underweight people have the shortest life expectancy.

I think that due to the thin ideals of today, Obesity is blown out of proportion. Generally, life is much harder for an obese person psychologically.

Furthermore, on the contrary to that misleading information, studies have shown that low calorie consuming people have longer life expectancy, which is associated with normal/underweight.

 

[Quinlan]

I think that due to the thin ideals of today, Obesity is blown out of proportion. Generally, life is much harder for an obese person psychologically.

By harder do you think it's more stressful? Do you know that stress causes many physiological problems as well as psychological? Including greater risk of disease and things like hardenening of the arteries. That's why even after accounting for other factors (like income, lifestyle etc.) people with low social status are sicker. The stress of being a social pariah is enough to strongly affect your health on it's own.

Furthermore, on the contrary to that misleading information, studies have shown that low calorie consuming people have longer life expectancy, which is associated with normal/underweight.

Could you point me to these studies? If they are based on monkeys/mice they are not relevant to people, also where is the study showing the link between calorie consumption and body size and what is wrong with this evidence I have presented?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090623133523.htm