[StavrosK]

The problem is clearly one of lack of self-control, as with drugs and everything else. The question is why we don't treat obese people as addicts, and try to mitigate easy access to food. If you're obese and your pantry is always full of food, how much weight do you think you're going to lose?

[richmarr]

> The problem is clearly one of lack of self-control...

I'm not aware of enough evidence to say that it's clearly anything... if you have references on this I'd be keen to hear them.

Short of some actual studies in this area, I'm skeptical.

Baumeister's work on ego depletion showed that self-control isn't a constant trait, it varies with other factors, so to show that self-control was the problem you'd have to show that there are no more hidden variables.

[StavrosK]

"Clearly" may have been too strong a word, but what I meant was that lack of self-control is a large component in addiction and we're failing to account for it adequately in obesity.

[richmarr]

> ...self-control is a large component in addiction...

I don't know the literature on addiction. What's that opinion based on?

There's definite evidence to support the idea of physiological or external factors influencing obesity, e.g. gut bacterea influencing food choices, envionmental differences changing things like portion size.

[TeMPOraL]

Which, to circle back to my original comment in this subthread, only shows that indeed people only have an illusion they can, personally for themselves, control (this particular item of) items on the CDC list. "Lack of self-control" as a widespread problem is exactly that.