[whodatbo1]

Absolutely agree. Unironically through the first few paragraphs I though this was some very cleverly put satirical take on modern society. There is a great book about the effects of modern food, primarily on dental health, written back in the 30s - Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston Price. Even though it's almost a century old, the findings are quite fascinating and can be extrapolated to present day. It's quite undeniable that modern life has drawbacks and obesity is just a symptom.

[bscphil]

I think it would be most accurate to say that people's bodies have a natural size given a particular food and social environment. That's a crucial bit of context that's very often neglected. Resisting one's environment is very difficult - it often requires you to have money, time, medicine, workout obsessed friends, or all of the above. Given changes in the environment in western countries over the last 50 years or so, weights are rising to their new "natural" levels as a consequence.

[pixl97]

> It's quite undeniable that modern life has drawbacks and obesity is just a symptom.

Yea, people tend to forget pre-green revolution people going hungry for longer periods of time and mass starvation were really common. We made a trade, between the sudden and terrible outcome of starving and hunger to one of long term consequences like obesity and disease.

[cfn]

That sounds to me like a false equivalence. The cause of obesity is not that food is plentiful because different rich countries have different obesity rates. There is something else driving this issue and, in my opinion, is the prevalence of processed foods and use of highly processed seed oils.

[sarchertech]

It’s probably a combination of factors, but look at the rate of change of obesity rates. Obesity rates have been going up almost everywhere. Essentially the rest of the world has been catching up to America. America was the first country where food was so abundant that it was essentially limitless for the majority of the population.

Perhaps the effect of limitless food on obesity rates takes time to manifest and is compounded in successive generations.

[pixl97]

Obesity is 100% caused by food is plentiful, with a catch....

There has to be excess calories in the first place, much like there must be oxygen for there to be a fire (don't you try to get florine involved in this).

Humans eating behavior seems to be driven by the first few years of our lives. If you eat like garbage as a kid, it follows you into adulthood. The US was (somewhat, there are still plenty of other even fatter countries) first with the TV to counter advertising that taught us that Trix was part of a balanced breakfast and that we should carry a coke wherever we go.

Other countries likely had confounding factors that slowed the excess calorie uptake. For example common traditional meals that were only replaced slowly. Other things that can tip the scale are things like higher walkability in their cities.(for example higher walkability in the US correlates with lower body mass).

But as stated, those confounding factors only slowed the fattening, it didn't stop it and the EU now is growing in weight just like the US did in the past.

[moffkalast]

We've gone quite far beyond never starving, we're eating far more than the required amount. Just a simple consequence of it being cheap and easy to make good tasting food by dumping sugar into literally everything. And the results are predictable.

[pixl97]

>We've gone quite far beyond never starving

I would counter you're incorrect, we're only 2 to 3 generations (maybe 4 now that I'm getting old) past never starving. On an evolutionary timescale this is nothing when talking about an impulse hundreds of millions of years old.

Our bodies never developed any means to prevent eating more than we needed other than "Oh $deity my belly hurts" and "Hmm, I better save some of this for tomorrow because food could run out then instead".

[moffkalast]

That's also completely true. I meant far beyond more in average lifetime caloric amount than evolutionary time spent doing it. We're definitely not adapted to any of this.