[ashwagary]

How hard is it to gather self discipline stats for those groups you mentioned? Not all populations put the same pressure on themselves to stay healthy. There is a massive safety net in Australia that doesnt exist in most of the world.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Some people are just desperate to make this about self-discipline despite significant evidence to the contrary, apparently.

[ashwagary]

You are correct, this is not purely due to self discipline.

It seems to me that traditional diets with long observed health outcome histories paired with self discipline lead to better results than the constantly reinvented hyper-processed fad food products (aka fiat foods) consumed in large health safety net environments.

[TheNewsIsHere]

This is sort of what I was getting at with my original comment. I also don’t give credence to the idea that this is primarily about will power, although I see how my original comment could be construed that way.

The US is dumpster fire, and I say that as a US citizen. We have so much high-calorie, low quality food, and so many obstacles to healthful food security in some places, that it borders on the intuitive that these would be significant contributing factors.