Here is the message: “All companies found to be selling unhealthy food within our borders will be considered enemies of the state and their corporate officers will be dealt with accordingly. A team of unbiased yet vindictive scientists will do the analysis of the health value of the food products. For those found guilty, the firing squads will be outfitted with explosive rounds and instructed to aim at the groin.”
“This food has been found by the State of California to contain calories.”
There’s no message that will work. The only solution is to ban flavourings so kids don’t get hooked on bad food.
One small problem with that:
Either you have to declare lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and onions unhealthy–or admit that fast food hamburgers are healthy, appropriate foods to eat.
You can’t have it both ways.
Losing weight and/or announcing it is fatphobic
Losing excess weight and/or announcing it is not evidence of irrational fear or aversion.
Re-introduce cannibalism - tell people the slow ones get eaten first.
In general, foods aren’t “healthy” or “unhealthy”, what matters is the whole diet. But there might be exceptions:
It says that both mouse and human data suggest a popular preservative, propionate, can trigger insulin resistance, which can lead to obesity and diabetes.
Build and have ‘positivity’ about active lifestyles and eating healthy. Walking/biking to work, not taking the car everywhere, weekend hikes, getting out there and moving as one part. Also not to fall into the habit of eating snacks or buying a high calorie drink every time one steps inside a store. I have a kid who did that last one (got him in as a child/not a baby), every store he went in he expected a treat like that, just because. Once I noticed this pattern I was a bit taken about it, the first couple of times, I just thought he was hungry/thirsty but no it was each and every time. I had to detrain him of that expectation, and also teach him the value of self control and the manipulation that stores do in this.
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We seem to have a culture of, “overdo it with whatever you want and then fix it”.
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Greasy, sweet, fatty foods are advertised way more than their healthy alternatives.
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A lot of advertising is aimed at impressionable children who are conditioned from birth to desire and eat many of the wrong foods. This isn’t even allowed in some societies.
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Our medical establishment is a “health repair” and not a “health care” system. Virtually all of the healthy things I do I’ve done on my own without a single doctor’s suggestion or advice. The establishment pushes high cost tests and high cost drugs. It discourages and even maligns a holistic approach to medical care.
I would love to have ten dollars for every American who could get off of drugs if they would just lose all the fat, cut way down on sugar, and eat healthy foods. My uncle used to weigh 40 pounds or more than what he does now. He was on blood pressure medicine, Type II diabetes medicine, and a few other drugs. Now, he’s on NOTHING. The difference is all in his health CARE, which has virtually eliminated the need for health REPAIR>
One related thing I’ve noticed is that we (as a society) seem to deliberately-but-subconsciously thwart efforts to encourage better choices in food. Namely, the media and social discussion gives the impression that better choices such as steamed veggies are bland and unsatisfying. Also if you order such things in restaurants they do come out… bland and unsatisfying. They don’t have to be. If prepared with delicious aromatics like onion, garlic, paprika, etc. healthy choices can be quite delicious. Also if they’re cooked properly. When a restaurant serves me steamed veggies that are barely cooked and crunchy, yeah, I find them distasteful and don’t eat them. We can do better but for some reason we don’t.
Crabs in a bucket…
Obesity rates have skyrocketed over the past 50 years primarily for two reasons:
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Food - or more precisely, calories - is cheaper than ever before (as measured by % of income spent on food).
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Availability of food is greater than it’s ever been.
If you want to turn the tide, you need to make food more expensive and less available.
I’m not sure I would say the messaging causes a rise in obesity. The true cause is likely the unfettered access to cheap, enticing, calorie laden foods and the massive corporate-driven marketing designed to get people to consume as much of it as possible. Even if messaging can’t eliminate obesity, I would think the messaging would help slow the rise in obesity.
I suspect the negative messaging helps to give someone motivation to change once they have made the decision to get healthier. Relating it to smoking, someone may smoke regardless of the messaging until they have some incident which makes them realize they need to make a change. Then when they decide to quit, the negative connotation of smoking can help them stay motivated to give it up. I feel the same is true for obesity. When someone realizes their weight is affecting their health or lifestyle, the negative messaging around obesity keeps them motivated to stay on their diet and exercise plan.
First, I think we need to be clear what we’re talking about. Do you want to lose weight or do you want to be healthy? You can do both, but some of the things that people do think it’s going to help them lose weight are really more in the line of staying or becoming healthy.
For instance: The science is in: exercise won’t help you lose much weight - Vox
And since we’re sharing #ownvoices testimony, I’d say my personal experience with weight gain and loss bears that out. Exercise is good to be healthy, eating lots of fruits and vegetables are great for health, but when it comes to weight caloric intake is king.
After gaining about five pounds a year for five years, I finally managed to put a check on it by rigorously tracking calories, to the point I am hesitant to share a meal when visiting friends and relatives (I don’t know the precise portions they used, and often they don’t either, so I can only guesstimate the calories). I lost weight by targeting 1500 calories a day and “splurging” to 1800 if I just couldn’t make it. In retrospect, that may have been a bit extreme, but even so it took six months to lose 20 pounds (and I was biking to work too, but as noted the biking probably didn’t do a whole lot for weight loss, though I’m sure it’s good for health).
I was fortunate to put a check on things before I got to the point of being obese (I was overweight), but seven years on (since I got my weight back down to mid-range) it’s still a daily struggle of planning and tracking calories, with zero-calorie beverages only (one of the first things I did when I realized how many calories I was getting daily was switch from regular coke to Diet Coke/Coke Zero) and knowing how to spread what I allow myself out throughout the day.
I consider myself fortunate that I am not a drinker (of alcohol—nothing against it, I just can’t stand the taste), because that is another source of calories that I think people tend to overlook in their weight loss efforts. The calories you drink, whether it’s through soft drinks, alcohol, or even “super healthy” fruit juice, count just as much as the calories you eat.
To sum it up, I think the most important message (to the extent there is a message that would help) is: figure out how many calories you need to consume to maintain your weight, and then rigorously ensure you get fewer. And if you still don’t lose weight, then eat fewer. Do not count on exercise to overpower consumption.
ETA: I am wholly opposed to efforts to make access to pleasure food like burgers, pizza, ice cream, etc, etc costlier. Such efforts only play into the narrative that fattening foods = fat people, when the truth has more to do with overall calories, whatever the source. I get fast food and takeout three or four times a week, which may be unhealthy, but it doesn’t cause me to gain weight because I still stay within my allowance for calories on a given day.
Er, you forgot the patty, and for that matter the bun and the sauce. I guarantee you that if you managed to order a hamburger “hold everything but the lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and (unfried) onions”, it would be healthier than average.
But in any case, you forgot my group of vindictive scientists. They have the ability to classify a burger differently from the sum of its parts, and could in theory target specific burger layouts if they felt like it.
Did you read the ravishly article?
“I asked a couple of friends who were formerly fat how they felt when they saw fat people. I was expecting them to say something like, “Oh, it’s hard for me” or “I feel embarrassed for them.” I was surprised when both answered that when they saw fat people, they felt empathy and that there would always be a fat person inside them who affected every part of their life.”
What **message **would it take? I don’t think there is one. You can’t shame or badger people into overcoming 4 billion years of evolution. Its just not going to happen.
I once read that no nation on earth is winning the war on obesity. Every nation is either getting fatter or (at best) staying about the same.
With cigarette smoking, once the health risks were known the rates of smoking started declining. I think among doctors nearly 50% smoked in the 60s, now its barely 5% of doctors. Rates for adults in general have been cut by about 60% since the health risks became known.
Nothing comparable exists for obesity anywhere on earth as far as I know. People know obesity is dangerous, unattractive, unhealthy, etc. but they keep getting fatter. I don’t think there is a message that can win the war on obesity. People already know obesity is bad for your health but more importantly (lets be honest about what motivates people) people know obesity is bad for your social status and physical attractiveness but that knowledge isn’t making people lose weight and keep it off permanently.
A true cure for obesity will have to be medical. I’m guessing altering the brain’s set point by doing things like giving leptin receptor agonists, or activating the stretch receptors at the top of the stomach, or something like that is what will win the war on obesity. The first truly safe, affordable and effective cures for obesity will do to obesity what antibiotics did for bacterial infections in the middle of the 20th century.
Bumping this thread to link an interesting article.
The message that should be given out is:
“Eat less ultra-processed food” - because it doesn’t satisfy hunger, and you end up eating too much.
How ultra-processed food took over your shopping basket
It’s cheap, attractive and convenient, and we eat it every day – it’s difficult not to. But is ultra-processed food making us ill and driving the global obesity crisis?
There’s a good research study mentioned in the article, and links to other published research.
A third reason: we’re increasingly a car-dependent society - even more than we were 50 years ago, when the jobs were still mostly in the center city, the suburbs weren’t nearly so sprawling as they are now, and commutes involving a combination of walking and public transportation were a lot more feasible.
Now the suburbs are far more vast, buses can’t cover the territory nearly as well, and a lot of the commuting is from one suburb to another anyway.
Even walking a few blocks at each end of your commute makes a difference when you do it day in and day out.