azertyfun , 11 months ago

It’s not just Americans. The obesity epidemic is a worldwide problem, and is still worsening in Europe for instance despite increasingly tighter regulations and an actual, significant improvement in eating habits for the past ~15 years.

Truth is, we have no fucking clue what truly causes obesity. Sure, eating less means less weight gained, but why do some people crave so much more food, and/or why does their body work so much harder to accumulate/not burn fat than others? We do know that several chemicals will change a person’s “natural BMI” (or whatever you wanna call it). But we don’t know how these chemicals work.

(More reading on this in A Chemical Hunger, which is absolutely fantastic)

Of course American food is terribly regulated, but there are good reasons to think this is largely unrelated to obesity. Which is not to discount the health benefits that would be reaped if you didn’t stuff tons of corn syrup, hormones, and antibiotics into everything of course.

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I think we should definitely try to understand the fundamental processes of weight gain/loss, because the idea that it’s all based on willpower is demonstrably wrong. And I do not think that, in the absence of finding the root cause of the obesity epidemic, providing patients with medication is obviously the right move to improve their quality of life. It’s not their fault that we don’t understand jack shit about why their bodies are rebelling or why the medication works, but the health benefits are undeniable.