[lommelun]

If a massive industry was baffled as to how buildings could possibly be full, pointing out the reason is very informative. Just because the reason isn’t exhaustive, doesn’t mean that it isn’t the best reason we have.

There are massive incentives to keep looking for explanations that are politically convenient, like “it is absolutely not your fault at all that you are fat, we finally found the cause and it’s this environmental factor / pollutant”. Great, I hope we get there, but in the mean while it doesn’t seem crazy to suggest that people are getting fat because high calory foods, alcohol, and snacks have become common, at the same time as everything became automated and lives became mostly sedentary.

No one is going to research the correlation between obesity, IQ and impulse control, or publish that “people are getting fat because modern humans are weak willed comfort addicts unable to deal with even the slightest discomfort like not being completely stuffed 24/7”.

Maybe it is just that people are eating more calories than they burn, and that’s it? Maybe we should be teaching people that that should eat 1500 calories per day, and if you’re still hungry then deal with it, it’s a slight discomfort that you’ll get used to over a few weeks, not some insurmountable urge that is impossible to control. Maybe people are fat because we’ve made the concept of personal responsibility into a taboo?

[amanaplanacanal]

Then the question becomes why did people start eating more food in the 80's than they did before? What changed in their environment that caused this change in behavior? And how is it that this change is apparently in the whole developed world, and also effects other animals, not just humans?