How do we solve the obesity crisis?

• Cheap access to fresh fruit and veg

• Education for healthy eating starting in childhood

• Public outdoor spaces that are enjoyable to exercise in

• 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.

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.

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.

There's not a single, one-size-fits-all solution, there's a lot of factors going into this

In no particular order, off the top of my head, a couple things that would need to change

1. Better nutrition/health education- a lot of people have almost no idea what eating healthy means
2. Better labeling requirements, there's a few weird loopholes in how food and such can be labeled, and companies get away with using some pretty misleading labeling, and we need to be tightening that down so that people can actually make better informed decisions about what they're eating.
3. Better pay and work/life balance- Planning and preparing a healthy diet takes time and money. Same with going to the gym. We need to free people up to be able to make those better, healthier choices for themselves
4. Addressing food deserts- In some places people just may not have easier access to healthy food. If you don't drive and public transit is spotty around you, and the only stores within walking distance of your home are gas stations and convenience stores, it's going to be hard to eat a healthy diet.
5. Pedestrian and bike friendly infrastructure- In a lot of cases, people don't walk or bike places because it's just not safe for them to do so. If you provide that opportunity for them, a lot of people will actually use it, they'll get more exercise, and save money on gas that can in turn be used for other healthier choices.
6. Healthcare- In some cases it may mean getting things like glp-1 drugs or surgeries to aid in weight loss, in other cases it might just be checking in with a doctor or nutritionist to come up with a weight loss plan to make sure you're going about it safely and effectively. Maybe you need blood work or other tests to identify other underlying health problems, maybe you have depression or anxiety that are making it difficult for you to be motivated to go to the gym or some sort of trauma you need to work through to address an eating disorder. Whatever the person's specific needs are, they need to be able to access them.

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.

I can tell you what I did. I went from 92 kilos to 69 kilos in a year.

1. Nearly removed all carbs from my diet
2. Increased diet to include vegetables and chicken and eggs
3. Removed artificial sugar
4. Removed all apps which allowed food delivery
5. Went to gym 5 days a week
6. 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.

Kill corn subsidies.

We've invented the cure to obesity. We should be dancing in the streets and throwing parades for scientists. Again. We invented the cure to obesity. It's just a distribution problem at this point. We just need to work on getting the drugs out to everyone that wants them at a price anyone can afford. Do that, and the obesity crisis is solved.

It turns out that when you give humans calorie abundance, it just breaks a lot of our "full meters." And we can fix that with a simple shot or pill. Generations fretting and brow-beating people over morality and gluttony. Generations of forcing people to painfully starve themselves to achieve a healthy weight. Generations of shame, guilt, and cruelty. But all along, the real issue wasn't moral. It was medical. Or perhaps, historical.

The reality is that many of us just have a part of our biology that isn't calibrated for the modern world. We have satiation systems that are designed for ages of famine. It's only in the last few centuries that food has become cheap and abundant, and it's still not that way everywhere. You take a satiation system that is evolved for an age of famine, but require it to live in an age of abundance? Obesity is the inevitable result. Sure, you can always starve yourself into a healthy weight. But the point is human beings aren't evolved to have to maintain their weight through painful conscious self-denial. We're supposed to simply eat when we're hungry and stop when we're full. That's how human beings have lived for most of history and pre-history. And until the era of modern cheap calories? Our ancestors never really had to worry about eating themselves to obesity. There was only so much honey you could get a hold of, and it required taking quite a few bee stings to get it. Maybe the Lord in his castle had to worry about obesity, but this is a burden our ancestors never had at scale. We guilt ourselves for failure to maintain healthy weights, when that's just not something humans should have to consciously do.

But we need not accept endless calorie counting and weight maintenance through intentional starvation. We also don't need to return to an age of deprivation. We CAN have our cake and eat it to. We don't need to accept obesity or starvation. We can build a world where calories are cheap and abundant, but people can simply modify their satiation systems to achieve whatever body weight they want without conscious effort. Find a way to get these drugs to everyone. That is how you solve the obesity crisis. Some may not want to take them or have medical reasons they can't. But it doesn't matter. Imagine lamenting if we only cut the obesity rate by 80%. Simply giving these drugs out free to as many people as want them will inevitably be the most effective form of obesity intervention a government could ever do. Forget public health campaigns and presidential fitness tests. Just get people the damn medicine they need.

We invented a miracle. Let's share the wonder.

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.

There’s no one single approach.

1. Stop overincentivizing HFCS; as a sugar replacement, its main feature is suppressing natural hormones that tell you “I’m full, let’s stop eating”. It’s a corn product, which often makes it a very “American” thing to support.
2. Design walkable communities. Many people can’t schedule out time to get exercise, but should get it regularly through their job or community.
3. Make programs designed to promote home cooking, ensuring people have time in their day to do it, adequate kitchen space, and buy-in from their family or lifemates. Many people live off take-out or ready meals, which means they don’t know what goes into it, and also don’t socialize with family.

What worked for me was living somewhere I could do a lot of outdoor labor. So I say replace all excavators with manual labor.

Switch to Scientific Socialism where people aren't overworked and in deep debt over shitty capitalism.

Whats the link? Stress, obviously.

We can start by not eating highly processed, industrially made food-like substances.

I wonder if part of it is because food is less nutritious than it used to be. So we eat more to unconsciously fulfill our nutrition needs, inadvertently also eating enough to help increase weight. I'm not saying this is the answer, but it may be a contributing cause.

Make people even poorer, so that they can transform from too poor to buy healthy food to too poor to buy food

I stopped eating animal products and lost 50 lbs, so that's a start

Ban every food and drink invented in the last hundred years

Teach children how to eat. In school. Countries that do this have much lower obesity rates.

I've been proposing that we tax HFCS out of existence for years now. Tax the hell out of all calorie dense sweeteners. When Dr Pepper Zero costs half as much as the sugary stuff, you'll see a lot more people making the switch

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)

https://www.the-independent.com/news/health/obesity-no-crisis-regular-exercise-more-important-than-weight-fat-but-fit-professor-traci-mann-a7833306.html

Bring on the downvotes, my body is ready.

One of the best available interventions is mandatory cooking classes in high school. Cut the necessary time out of other classes and do it.

This is gonna be an unpopular take, but I vote for federally subsidized meth rations. I bet I'd be super productive and who needs sleep?

I think most problems with obesity will be solved like this:

You absolutely can get addicted to food, others turn to food for comfort, some eat as a response to trauma as well (ever see my 600lb life, almost every person there has had some sort of trauma or mental health struggle.), therapy and other mental health care never seems to make it into these plans and that, in my opinion, is where they fail.

Most governments never seem to treat obesity as a chronic illness, just some sort of personal failing.

Edit.

Obesity risk factors are also genetic, no one chooses to be obese and the constant shaming and hatred people who exist in fat bodies get is unreal. I know fat people who are terrified of being seen even going for a walk outside because of internalised fat shaming, it fucks with your head something fierce.

I grew up fat which did not set me up for good habits later in life, I have struggled with binge eating and stress eating all throughout my life, getting an ADHD diagnosis and medicated for it was probably one of the best things that could have happened to me, others in my situation may not have the ability to get that help or be in a place they are ready to even seek it.

give them all ozempic or GLP-1. almost every method, they want quick fixes, or dont want do dieting or exercising or they dont want to do it. glp-1 has a side benefit in helping with other addictions.

The collapse of industrialized society will solve it very quickly.

The education system needs to be redeveloped from the ground up. It's a 19th century system in the 21st century.

Physical Education needs to be prioritized as does social engagement.

Ban all cell phone chargers except for human-powered generators. If you want to use a cell phone, you have to work for it by generating the power with your muscles.

Home / office hamster wheels, treadmills, etc - these would be the only things with a phone charger cable under my brilliant plan.

The issue has been pretty much solved. Now we just need to distribute the solution to the people that need it.

What needs to be done and what will be done are unfortunately never going to align as long as someone stands to get rich on it.

What needs to be done:

• Healthier food options
• Healthier work/life balance
• Education on what is healthy and unhealthy
• Encouragement to daily physical

Why this will never be done:

• Too much money to be made on "tasty" premade meals, which "tasty" and "profitable" require lots of flavor enhancers and preservatives, both very calorically imbalanced / dense and also toxic in large quantities (toxicity is how preservatives work). If you don't flavor enhance, your competitor will for cheaper and people won't buy your option. Also each growing industry insisting their food in solo is the healthiest when it is not. I'm pointing at you corn and grain industries.
• 40 hr 9-5 8/5 work week is only office workers. Servicemen and retail sales often work 10-12+ hours per day or have all hours on call.
• points at every part of the American education system and its exported policies other countries sometimes take up
• Point 2 is the reason a lot of people don't exercise. There is no time to do so.
• Healthcare is expensive. When there is money to be made, it is always in healthcare. If you can't afford a consumer product, you don't buy it. If you can't afford a surgery or medicine to save your life, you die. This simple fact makes it nearly impossible to have any say in how much a treatment costs.

This is not just an American problem. Other western countries have this issue as well, and I hope people in other nations see the danger and keep themselves healthy.

Be different animals or require life to be more physically demanding. The problem isn’t food, it’s just how we are, literally any other animal in an ecological setting like humans would have the same problem. There is no requirement in the modern world that requires humans to not be fat.

It’s not healthy, but to survive in human society physical fitness is 100% not a requirement. This is just us now.

I don’t think there is a solid answer but the current political chaos points to one step

• make junk and fast food more expensive - vice taxes

Looking at myself, I see portion size is the number one issue. Mental state also contribute, although I can’t claim anything treatable. So I eat too much and it’s a comfort thing but I don’t see a way for government to help me do the right thing there

Exercise. While exercise isn’t the main contributor to being overweight, it does go to state of mind. I’m much less likely to overeat when I’ve been active. This is where we ought to be able to do something to keep people moving

Pay people to lose weight and then pay an even better rate for maintaining a healthy weight

Firstly, BMI only really works for people of otherwise average height and musculature. A bodybuilder could be seen as obese for example. So just fixing for that would help.

But more importantly, and perhaps unpopularly, I think people have gotten too used to feeling full all the time, and that the slightest feeling of hunger signals red alert. I see people constantly grazing throughout the day the moment they get even slightly hungry, sometimes without evening noticing it themselves, then they'll still eat big meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

Unless you're regularly getting a good amount of exercise from work or your personal lifestyle, then of course you're gonna put on weight cause those calories have got nowhere to go. Now while there are other factors that can tip the scales into or out of your favour, ultimately:

Daily Energy Input < Energy Output = Weight Loss

Now some will say they can't not eat, because they can't concentrate otherwise, it gives them the shakes, or something else. But for 99% of people, that "need" is all psychological, and can be shaken off with time and patience.

I would know, cause I experienced this when I was younger changing my diet to help lose weight. Being purposefully intermittent about eating will suck at first as your body and mind adjust to the new status quo, but stick with it and your body and mind will be healthier for it.

((Just to be clear, I'm not promoting any kind of eating disorder or crash dieting. Losing weight sustainably is about small changes that you take with you into the future, not making huge changes that make you sick/depressed, or throwing your body around like a metabolic ragdoll. But I do mean it when I say putting more planning and restraint into when and what you eat will do you a world of wonder))

I am obese. It's a cumulation of calories factors. It's some part meds - which I have to take because society and I don't mesh well because I actually believe people deserve a good quality of life instead of profit over everything. It's some part emotional issues - I've had some trauma and I need some therapy but I can't afford the time and money. It's some part convenience - I don't have a lot of external support to take care of my family, so I have to do a lot and the available choices are usually focused on convenience not health. It's some part logistics - walking is not an option around my city and public transit is completely worthless.

Get rid of BMI.

Why does it need solving in the first place?

To solve it we'd need to start with horrific public execution of every living member of the last 40 years CEOs and whole boards of the food industry...

The first thing to understand is that nobody understands the obesity crisis at all.

The second thing to understand is that the human body naturally stays at a healthy weight, just like any other animal, unless a person has become completely out of touch with their bodies. It cannot be solved with control or medicine.

The third thing to understand is that we teach people to dissociate from their bodies from childhood.

So we do not have an obesity crisis, we have a disembodiment crisis. And obesity is only one of the thousands of horrible effects it creates.

Since nobody in any government seems to have thought up a working solution

What do you mean by that? There have been measures against obesity, the sugar tax in the UK for example.

"You just eat less and exercise more."

• Kronk, Crash Nitro Kart

(Or like, regulating the food industry and providing real grocery opportunities for everyone)

As long as people have cheaply available high-calorie, great tasting food, enormous portions and free will, you will not solve the obesity crisis.

To change any of those, you'll have to be incredibly patient and do it by tiny, tiny increments or else you'll create a revolt somewhere in society.

The upcoming food shortages should take care of it.

Start re-educating treatlerites

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

same thing as my solution to every problem. reduce wealth disparity. most every adult who manages to get a decent life going tends to start excersising and buying more healthy food. Yeah some won't but the percentages would be way down. Oh and no raising work hours to achieve it. If anything less work hours so more time for healthy lifestyle.

Global food infrastructure collapse would do it

Hormone shots seem to be the most effective. Diet works but good luck convincing many people of that let alone getting them to actually stick to it.

what's your idea?

Stop subsidizing animal feed. I'm not opposed to eating meat but it's easy to get too many calories per bite from it. Farm subsidies for human crops in order to keep farms stable is semi reasonable though. Local food forests (such as community maintained gardens along walking paths where people live and parks) I think are a great supplement to peoples diets and amenities for communities but aren't replacing staples anytime soon.

Limit food advertising for any meal over 800 calories. Limit the amount of money that can be paid for food advertising per business.

Mandatory cooking classes in schools for all genders.

The rest requires more radical solutions. Unfortunately a big part of it is our socioeconomic situation. One example low worker bargaining power leading to too few meaningful after work hours. Another is the push for hyper individualism, cooking 3 meal for 7 people once a week is easier then cooking 3 meals for one person everyday forever. Few of our living arrangements are built for potluck or communal cooking though. The resteraunt experience just isn't it either because of the strong dehumanization between staff and customer.

The other being mental health. Both in part from above but also constant comparison with imaginary people (advertisements, celebrities, and social media profiles for example). Better crisis support(I.e. not just cops and grippie socks). Community support. More access to therapy and pychiactrics (including for this topic peptides like glp-1). I am biased towards the last ones being "last resort". Not in a "oh you're at a breaking point and need help, let's try talking to your friends first before we can prescribe you something" kind bs way, but more so assume we, as a society, are already doing the rest first but also have easy access to professional services.

Walkable cities would help probally both improve community potential and exercise.

Lastly, if we drastically improve work life balance, have better self esteem and community support, improve our food, we could see exercise be a lot easier to solve. Access to physical game spaces is one way to help (again IF people have time and friends). Physical involvement with the community (cooking, collecting food, cleaning up the community garden, etc) honestly would be a huge step away from sedimentary lifestyle for a lot of people.

mandatory meth

education about food would help. nutrition courses starting from a young age (veggies=smart choice, fried cheese=bad choice) carrying right through high school (insoluble fiber=smart choice, saturated fat=bad choice) that steadily increases the depth/complexity of what is essentially the same information would help.

caloric density is the main factor in choosing healthy options, but what is equally important is giving people the free time and resources to devote to both preparing food and the act of choosing itself (planning/prepping meals, grocery shopping, logging or otherwise tracking intake). when both of a family’s adults’ work day has to include an 8.5-hour shift with 2 hours of commute/preparation time, child care, cooking, cleaning, exercise, reading a couple of books per month, and more, you have to start prioritizing. the first things to go are cooking, exercise, reading, recreation. so the more the working class gets squeezed, the more a work day starts to look like: a 10-hour shift if you’re lucky enough to qualify for overtime, eat on your commute from a fast food place, get home and feed said garbage to your children whom you are steadily poisoning now (just look into the effects of the ingredients and additives that go into a mcdonalds meal and tell me you would ever eat there again if you weren’t hopelessly addicted to those ingredients and the convenience), and then half-assing the rest of your life’s upkeep because you have no energy from being overworked, getting no exercise, and eating trash day in, day out.

the obesity epidemic is 100% a problem of modern capitalism. it stems from min-maxing your life’s profitability in terms of how you use your time and money. gym memberships are expensive and a routine requires 10 hours a week you don’t have. hiking trips and other outdoor activities take time and equipment you can’t afford. proper diet and cooking take time and money you don’t have. it self-reinforces when you no longer have energy to develop new habits and can no longer see a way out of it.

it’s gotten so bad that now people are cutting children and social interaction out of their lives because they don’t have the time, money, or energy.

instead of improving these conditions, the current US regime’s solution is to force us to submit by outlawing abortion and probably contraceptives at some point, to tie healthcare to employment status, to reduce public assistance and welfare, among other social paradigms that isolate us and disempower us.

Glp-1 drugs

Add glp1s to all sugar ingredients in processed food.

There's no where to go, and everything is expensive. Pay people more, give them more time off, have city sponsored block parties. You can't make someone more active, but otherwise healthy and well-rounded people don't need much incentive to leave the house and take a walk.

After that, have a wellbeing crew that checks on and helps out those that are still avoiding socialization.

But the pearl clutching around wages and vacation means the local governments will do nothing. Any measure implemented without massive societal overhaul will only be a band-aid.

Also, you and I read studies like this, and think "we need to help people." But if you flip the perspective to who paid for the study, it becomes "we need healthy workers to feed into the meatgrinder." The goal of the study isn't altruistic, its to make sure the owners have a healthy livestock pool, which means the bare minimum will be done, or preferably nothing because we may be able to work around it.

Redefine obese.

People eating unhealthy food is partially related to their situation, it could be mental, it could be physical, or simply convenience.

The main thing is to have some form of exercise that people can do and that caters to their energy levels. Granted not everyone can, not everyone wants to. And sometimes, it's not feasible.

I wrote this in another post; growing up I would eat 5000-10000 (spring vs winter) calories a day and never could get past 125, but I also had gym and track in school, swimming practice, martial arts classes, and a military style torturous daily workout... every day. And I would still go ride bikes with my friends on the street or play tag or whatever. In the winter I would shovel the snow, which would probably be considered child abuse these days. Now I'm not saying do everyone should do that. I even toned down how much I did when I started college but I still practiced to be able to do a triathlon. It's a shame I broke my leg before being able to try one.

I would eat breakfast, two school lunches, have snacks, eat when I got home, and have second supper. I could easily eat a dominos pizza to by myself (probably did a number on my gut since I learned I can't eat wheat) and wash it down with some soda.

Now I bring this up because I worked in education briefly and ate lunch with the kids during lunch duty; I can tell you if anyone was as active as I was, I would need at least four lunches to make through the day. Sure it was the healthy lunch implementation, but I the result that I saw was that kids were lethargic and sure it made the classes easy to do since everyone was so docile but I think that was a terrible way to go about it. And I tried their "healthy" lunches out intentionally; if it we're not for drinking a whole pot of coffee a day, I wouldn't make it through the 14 hour day (school, after school, and commute).

Also, it's been so hot this year that my only exercise was mowing the lawn before feeling cooked. I wouldn't mind going to a pool but it's more of a hot tub. YMCA has an inside pool but I can't afford $95 a month. I can't run anymore because of the metal. And my two bicycles collect dust since I have to go to a trail or a park for biking unless I want to be roadkill, even then I can only do that maybe two to three months out of the year because of how hot it gets.

Even recognizing that people have dietary restrictions is a great start. I can't eat wheat or lentils, and certain fruits.

Quality, cost, and availability of food is very high on the list. And I'll be honest, food in America is some of the worst I've eaten and it's even worse lately; I've had MREs that tasted better than frozen food that I used to eat as a kid in the US. Mmmm, textured soy protein and emulsifiers.

I felt great and lost weight in Japan, Korea, Ireland, European countries. I was 165 pounds when I got back from Japan. I'm back to 200ish. Sigh. I don't eat out much and generally cook at home. The issue for me is that meat and dairy have become expensive. And eating rice and beans and vegetables barely gets me by to do daily tasks.

And none of the countries I've mentioned are perfect by any means but there is a bigger focus on food health and safety instead of spin the wheel for today's recall! It's like I can eat all the raw fish, beef, eggs, raw pork in Germany lol, shellfish and so on but this last year has been wild for food recalls. I mean ice cream? Can't even trust lettuce or a pepper.

Why is it the government's job to solve the obesity epidemic?

Sugar is in every processed food, even savory foods where it's balanced out with other spices, because sugar is addictive. They can't put cocaine in food anymore, so they add the next best thing.

I eat nearly zero-carb. I've been ketogenic for about six years now. I know exactly what I eat because I make all of my own meals, and none of it is processed food. No, it's not more expensive, because eating this way eliminates cravings and you eat far less but better quality. It looks more expensive on paper only because you don't realize you're going to eat half as much food if you eat this way.

One good rule is no more than two ingredients listed on the package. So, for instance, natural peanut butter includes only peanuts and salt, but the other stuff adds homogenized oil and sugar. They take out the peanut oil and sell it separately for a high price. I don't eat peanut butter, but it's a good example of the rule everyone is familiar with.

Depends on if you wanna do it in a more ethical manner or not. One way you could do it, at least for some places with the resources necessary, is basically forcing tech companies to subtly change your algorithm to slowly push you to believe that you being obese is bad... or that it's bad in general. Subtly make fatphobic content more accepted by you until you decide to try and change your habits to not be fat. Though, that could just as easily backfire and lead to a spike in suicide for people unable to do it, which is obviously bad.

Though, I think the better option ( at least in my country of the States ) is actual proper education on healthy eating and exercise combined with working on fixing the economy so people have more free time while also having a living wage and access to affordable healthcare.

Mounjaro to all.

Might not be the answer people want, but the most immediate fix is to increase the availability of GLP-1 drugs. They genuinely work well. It's not the "perfect world" solution, but it's looking at cutting the rate of heart disease dramatically, which means something.

The rest is systemic and will take a lot longer to fix. Not just making it easier to access quality healthy ingredients, but making it more advantageous to pick healthy options over junk. And part of it is also cultural, having to redefine an entire cuisine or adapt it to healthier formats. That type of change takes generations.

Okay i am assuming you are well meaning so i hope you have kept an open mind and are actually interested in "solutions". I am also well meaning but my frustration will come through in my comment. I am urging you to actually read up on the issue bc you have not .

There is no epidemic. Fat people don't need to be eradicated, be mindful about what you put out in the world, talking about fat people like THEY are a disease is incredible dehumanising. Other "unhealthy" habits we talk about are something you do not what you are.

Imagine we would treat everyone who isn't perfectly fit like we treat fat people, imagine people commenting on your body all of the time because you aren't jacked. We are accepting and even in favor of a level of virtriol towards fat people that would be unimaginable if done to any other kind of populace.

If you are worried for the health of people than go from there, what are the specifics you care about? Because i can guarante you thin people have all the same problems. I am thin as a stick but certainly unhealthy as fuck.

Here are some points for you to think about

1. The health sector isn't perfect, doctors can believe in myths. Just like black people and women don't get the pain medication they need fat people often don't get the care they need because doctors are solely focused on their health. If you listen to fat people they will tell you all about it. BMI is not a great tool since everyone is different and just having a higher BMI is not enough information to go on.
2. Fat peoples higher risks often don't go away when they lose weight. We need more studies here.
3. Stress is bad for your overall health. How stressful do you think it is when everyone and their mother makes your body their problem. Poor people are more often stressed too.
4. Lets be honest people don't care about fat peoples health, they care because they don't like seeing it. We are all unhealthier and unfitter than we could be but for everyone else it is " don't tell others what to do"
5. The constant talk about weight triggers eating disorders and make fat people gain even more weight this is a fact not an opinion.
6. Everything can become a healthrisk, boxers destroy their brain, basejumpers regulary fall to their death, bodybuilders take too many drugs. Its not an epidemic people will do people things.

There is so much more to it, one of my favorite health podcasts is "maintenance phase" give it a listen they talk alot about all kinds of health myths.

So just don't focus on weight focus on overall health and what people need to succeed and if people are still fat let them be fat. They can decide for themselves.

People have a choice. They don't want to choose to change their diets, embrace healthy eating, and learn to cook delicious vegetables. They want to keep eating a bunch of junky convenience foods, because it asks less of them. When they're ready to put the work in, they will lose weight.

1 fix bmi. Its completely wrong for people who are very tall or very Short making insurance more expensive among other things.

2 glp1 for all

✅ Degrade/dismantle/destroy modern food delivery and safety systems

There, now you can't get obese because we made america super great again! 50 billion trillion dimensional chess baby!

Idk man but the root issue is people have a massive lack of discipline. With discipline and will, almost anything personal like this can be solved. I guess it's an issue of the education system... Not sure exactly