[orborde]

The US adult obesity rate is 42.4% [1]. To get to 75% of deaths being obese people, you'd need about a 4x death rate of obese people compared to non-obese people. Most obese people find it extremely hard to stop being obese and often fail despite immense effort.

Meanwhile, getting a COVID vaccine reduces the chance of death by >10x at a cost of <$40 per person. My impression is that vaccines are unusually cost-effective medicine and that the low-impact medical spending is elsewhere in the system, but it is nonetheless thought-provoking to consider this specific example.

[1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm

[brigandish]

> Most obese people find it extremely hard to stop being obese and often fail despite immense effort.

I used to help out at a slimming group. Like many self-improvement quests, the effort waxes and wanes. Much as I wished for people to achieve their dream of being slimmer, and even though their wishes and often their attempts were laudable, I wouldn't call them "immense". They're people, most wanted an easy fix and struggled to remain dedicated when faced with the harder bits.

[lambdaba]

This. It's not hard to make the necessary changes if sufficiently motivated. In fact, formulating the motivation is kind of the only step, everybody, and I mean *EVERYBODY* can achieve appropriate weight and even above-average fitness if following the right precepts.

[tsimionescu]

Why do you assume this is a matter of motivation, or that motivation is not itself a component of obesity as a disease?

Our urges to eat and be lazy are also a consequence of our health and diet. They are not coming out of some pure rational willpower plane.

[lambdaba]

Sorry, I'm not sure I expressed what I meant clearly so I'll try again: I mean that it's sufficient to be motivated WHEN armed with the proper knowledge; I think many people fail DESPITE being motivated because they are simply misinformed as to what works.

Yes, reading my comment again it doesn't seem I was saying that. Anyway, I don't think that much motivation is required, and if a diet / lifestyle change is hard to stick to, it's often because it's a misguided strategy. For illustration, counting calories while not making qualitative changes in the composition of the diet is just simply never going to work, long-term. Some foods are just too hyperpalatable, too prone to form emotional / addictive associations, but conversely that also implies those dietary changes will have to confront some emotional regulation issues as well. It sounds complicated, but I don't know, I think looking at how widespread the overweight issue is nowadays we have to conclude almost all of us are doing something wrong wrt to diet and lifestyle.

[stainforth]

I'd rather reshape the environment we all live in. And yes I mean soda bans and the like.

[lambdaba]

Oh I agree, I think we've been greatly underestimating how damaging all these are and so should be treated like cigarettes with very heavy taxation that should go towards subsidizing healthy food.

[908B64B197]

> Most obese people find it extremely hard to stop being obese and often fail despite immense effort.

Calories in vs calories out. Simple as that.

[tsimionescu]

Ok, how does that explain why some people want to eat even when they're full, while others feel full after eating a grape (exaggerating)?

[908B64B197]

It doesn't.

Weight is a direct results of the calorie equation.

Appetite is regulated by a bunch of different factors. Actually, when you think about it, someone could live just fine being constantly hungry (so completely broken appetite signals) in a food scarce environment.

[Robotbeat]

You’re fighting a billion years of evolution screaming at you to bulk up in case there’s a famine. Good luck.

[spurgu]

That's a bit illogical isn't it? Better to put the food in your pockets than in your stomach.

[paulpauper]

even bariatric surgery seldom produces thinness. It only makes a very obese person only mildly obese, optimistically. The diet and fitness industries are worth billions of dollars, with pitifully poor results to show for it. Biology is fighting all efforts to make humans thinner.

[NoPie]

It could be true that obese have 4 times higher death rate. Note that obesity often comes together with diabetes and cardiovascular diseases which increase the risk even more.

Vaccines are effective, they reduce death rate approximately 10 times. It still seemed quite high that several EU countries have reintroduced restrictions despite good vaccination uptake.

Besides this is about long-term issues, not just covid or something we can fix in 1 or 2 years.