[bequanna]

Humans are not bears.

Also, the life expectancy of humans is >10x a bear.

Why are people bending over backwards to normalize diabetes and obesity?

The weeds in a garden need to be pulled or they will take the garden. Problems need to be recognized and then fixed, anything else is delusion.

[InDubioProRubio]

We are not defending obesity, we are advocating for a balanced view, while you are busy with your little crusade.

My suggestion is to look at old black/white tribal photos of natives. They do not fullfill your beauty standards, but they lived normal sustenance lifes. And yes, the woman and men have bellies. Not huge ones, but noticeable ones. Same thing in the animal kingdom. The dominant monkey in a harem, besides the normal hormonal dominance meat-mountain bloat, usually has a belly. Our beauty standard is met by animals in distress, being pushed into marginal territories. Healthy is, somewhere in the middle, not on either side of the isles of madness.

[bequanna]

If you are overweight, you need to take responsibility and change your lifestyle.

Of course, everyone instinctively knows this even if they want to use mental gymnastics to explain why it is OK. Alcoholics, drug addicts, etc are defensive too and have many excuses at the ready for why their behavior is acceptable.

In the end, however, reality will hit hard and five dollar words aren’t going to save the obese and those with unhealthy lifestyles from sickness and early death.

[ein0p]

Not true. Bears live about 25 years. 35-40 years in captivity. I don’t think they’re normalizing obesity upthread, they’re merely pointing out that in nature accumulation of significant quantities of subcutaneous and visceral fat is normal, as are periods of starvation that we no longer experience.

[lostapathy]

Correct - I wasn't trying to normalize obesity upthread, at all.

Bears are an example that shows very clearly it's normal for animals in nature to become very much "not lean" to survive, and the drive to put on fat stores is probably much broader in nature than animals that hibernate to survive winter.

What's unique about humans is that we've engineered our environment to the point that most of us no longer suffer long stretches of being unfed or underfed to strip the excess fat stores off of us.

Some people are clearly better than others at fighting the behavior evolution has programmed into them. It's not good for them today, but at the same time that drive for survival is what kept their ancestors alive.