Okay, here’s your problem. You think that we are divided into two things, (1) the body, which can become unwell, and (2) the person, which can decide what to eat, and that the body communicates with you by becoming unwell.
But that’s not how it works. It is also the body that is telling you “I really want to eat some pizza right now.” Becoming unwell is not an act of communication, it’s a result that happens in some indeterminate future. Cravings/appetites/hunger/desire, are rooted in our physical bodies as much as they are in our intellectual/rational minds.
Who said that?
If you think that the public obesity crises is about determination/motivation/education, you are never going to solve the problem. The people who have lost weight and kept it off merely through applying the rational facts of calories are outliers. You cannot use them as a model.
Parents make all the decisions about what and how much their children eat. Outside of the rare medical condition there shouldn’t be even one chubby kid. Considering the consequences of a lifetime of obesity and the odds a child that is obese will stay obese it surprises me we don’t see this in the same light as smoking in your car with your baby.
I’m in my 40’s, when I was a child I sat in the front seat without a seatbelt and my mother smoked. That sort of thing isn’t ‘done’ anymore. Obese children I think will one day bring social shame to their parents, so they’ll change, and healthy kids will likely stay healthy adults.
You/your body is not a bag of skin filled with a lump of meat which is being run from the outside solely by the part of it that is called your conscious mind. You/your body, along with its normal microbiota, is an intricate highly complicated entanglement of systems continuously providing feedback to and among each other. Your conscious mind is a part of this, and has significant influence over much of what the whole system does; but it is only a part of it, is continuously affected by what’s going on with the other parts, and neither understands nor controls all of the other parts.
Insisting on attempting to treat this situation as something that can be dealt with in “simple terms” isn’t a solution. It’s a problem.
ETA:
Children under the age of around four, maybe. And even then, at most in one direction; the kid who’s nauseated by tomato sauce isn’t going to eat it, and a parent who insists is just going to wind up wearing it.
:rolleyes: I don’t force feed my children, but I do buy and prepare everything. They only CAN eat what I choose in the quantities I choose. You underestimate the parents role, I think. Now their school plays a role, and I wouldn’t be shocked if healthier options where more common in wealthier districts. Still, most of what a child will eat before they can drive is determined by parents. Or should be by responsible ones.
I wonder if the change in children’s eating habits in the past decades has greatly contributed to the obesity problem. I would guess that most modern families are busy and stressed and frequently turn to highly processed convenience foods. Kids likely grow up on a diet of chicken nuggets, mac and cheese, pizza, etc. rather than regular food cooked from scratch. Even if the child eats well in the household, everywhere else will have typical kid food. Even schools and restaurants have kids meals which are more of the same glop. Even the drink choices in the school cafeteria may include carbo-loaded chocolate milk and gatorade. So it would probably be expected that kids would maintain those same diet preferences as adults for rich, fatty, creamy, starchy, and low-nutrition foods.
You do understand that the universe of decisions isn’t necessarily accessible to all parents, right? What about those living in a food desert? What about those whose children are bombarded by advertising? Etc.
This is not a problem that can be solved by targeting individuals.
You believe there’s insufficient shame surrounding obesity in our culture?
Yes it can, individuals are the ones making decisions that have severe consequences for their children and future generations. What if I used all the above excuses for why I buy my 6 year old smokes and a Bud Light? Next to those two, obesity is what an adults doctor is most likely to be concerned about so why is it different?
And shame directed at parents can be appropriate. For instance, a parent has a responsibility to not let their children destroy displays in apartment stores.
To those who insist, “It’s simple! You simply have to consume fewer calories than you burn,” I can only say I sure hope you don’t use that line on drug addicts. “It’s simple! You simply have to stop doing drugs!”
What’s that? You’d never say that to drug addicts because food doesn’t have the same effect as drugs on the brain? Au contraire!
From Scientific American: “Like many pleasurable behaviors—including sex and drug use—eating can trigger the release of dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter in the brain. This internal chemical reward, in turn, increases the likelihood that the associated action will eventually become habitual through positive reinforcement conditioning.”
Note that the Hopkins article specifically says what many researchers have found: as BMI increases, dopamine levels drop, compelling people to eat more, just as addictive drugs do.
I’m willing to repeat all this every time someone gives a simplistic answer or thinks it’s as simple as using a message.
But the anti-anti-obesity crowd (for lack of a better term) still has not come up with a good solution.
“Weight loss is simple, but difficult” leads to "don’t call it simple!"
“Our high-tech, convenient lifestyle enables obesity” - well, the benefits of a high-tech society outweigh the drawbacks. We shouldn’t give up cars, subways, etc. and force people to walk on foot, that would make no economic sense.
“Run a PSA about how obesity is unhealthy” - it doesn’t work, everyone ***knows ***that obesity causes heart disease, diabetes, cancer, etc.
Body positivity = doesn’t work
Body negativity = doesn’t work
You have one side of the debate that is great at arguing against things like pro-exercise, pro-healthy diet campaigns, but presents no viable alternative.
Public policy could change the kinds of food that are out there (i.e. make sure grocery stores are accessible to every neighborhood), and can make walking more necessary – i.e. better public transportation, no requirements for parking for new construction, pedestrian-only streets (or pedestrian + bus only), etc.
That wouldn’t work, as apparently any kind of calorie deficit is a psychological nightmare. So nutritious but less calorie-dense food would have to be consumed in ever greater amounts.
I’m NOT arguing against pro-exercise, pro-healthy-diet campaigns. I do intensive 60-minute workouts six days a week and do weight training three of those days. I’m at a healthy weight, and I’m all for healthy eating and exercise. What I’m firmly, passionately against is people arguing that weight loss is simple, or that people who are obese simply need to control their food intake. That’s insulting to overweight people–and I’m not overweight–AND it’s simplistic.
We need more research so we can understand the mechanisms that lead to obesity better. In the meantime, let’s quit insisting it’s either easy or simple.
I know, it’s complex and no one anywhere personally can be held accountable for anything.
If we could start somewhere though, might it be young ones whose diet and behavior could be modified with just providing less calories? Is that asking too much of humanity? Is that too complex for this issue?
I don’t have children, but I have been one. Even in the 1950’s, and even in grade school, kids traded lunches, gave other kids things they didn’t feel like eating, sometimes ate at each other’s houses, used what pocket money they were given or could earn to buy treats to eat, and so on. Plenty of kids who aren’t old enough to drive are sometimes out of their parents’ sight at places where they have access to food.
Do parents have a lot of say in what their children get to eat, especially when those children are very young? Yes, of course. But they don’t have total control once the children get past infancy (some of them don’t have it then, as they may have to go to work and may have limited options for where to leave the children while they do); and the degree of control they have lessens as the children get older. And attempts to keep stringent control may backfire.
Parents have the greatest reason to engender the health of their children and the greatest ability to as well, despite the silly excuses of some. The question asked was ‘what message would it take to make obesity rates plummet dramatically?’
My answer was, ‘it is no longer socially acceptable to raise a fat kid’. Which is not ‘fat shaming’ it is ‘poor parenting shaming’, which is fine because, for many other reasons as well, that is also why we don’t beat children in public anymore.
It’s rose dramatically because our food has changed (endless access to it, and junk food to boot), and our jobs have become less physical. Years ago, by and large, people didn’t really need motivation to stay relatively thin because that was just a natural state of being for most people (excusing maybe the far richer elite, in later years). So no, I don’t necessarily think people simply AREN’T motivated in general. But we’ve been afforded the opportunity to form different motivations. Similar with education - I don’t think we’re, by and large, just not educated enough. But nutritional education specifically hasn’t been a huge priority and schools, and how are parents going to teach proper nutritional education when, statistically, they’re also likely to be overweight or obese, and weren’t taught how to remain a healthy weight?
I feel it’s not the level of motivation that needs to change - it’s finding the right motivation for you. In my case, 2-3 years ago, I didn’t feel motivated to lose weight due to health. I was in my late 20’s, obese but otherwise fortunate enough to be healthy. I never had high blood pressure, I could walk all day no problem, etc. So losing weight wasn’t a priority. I went through a hard time where I got hurt by someone super important to me. I realized that I had really very poor self-esteem, and that I had used this other person’s feelings about me to prop myself up (I apologize for being vague, it’s just not something I like to talk about a lot). I decided to lose weight as well as focus on my mental health. My mantra became, “I will be the sole source of my self-confidence - not some random dude.” And it worked. I actually didn’t find it very difficult to shed the pounds.
Some people may struggle with actual addiction, which I can only imagine would make things 10x harder. That doesn’t change the fact that even drug addicts and lifetime smokers can still quit, however. They need the right motivation, but likely also the help of a professional therapist or psychiatrist. I’d recommend the same for people struggling to overcome food addiction.
But I’d argue that simple =/= easy. A simple concept (eat less and move more / stop drinking alcohol / stop gambling) can be incredibly difficult to actually pull off, namely because we are human beings with normal human shortcomings. The problem with insisting weight loss is so impossibly difficult is that if that’s all someone ever hears, of course they’re never going to actually try. I wish more people understood that losing weight doesn’t mean starving yourself. It means lowering your calories, either simply by eating less or determining a daily or weekly calorie amount to stick to. It’s not easy, no, but it is simple.
Personally, I think there just isn’t ever going to be a perfect answer. Me, I’d want to see better nutritional information in schools. Adults CAN alter their lifestyle habits, but that’s easier to do when you’re a child, your habits are still developing and you’re reliant on adults to get your food for you. Eventually those children, hopefully with better eating habits, will then grow up to raise their own kids in a similar style. You’ll still have your kids that do overeat, and your adults that develop bad habits (although I was overweight here and there as a kid, I didn’t become obese until I left my parents’ house), but hopefully far fewer. And hey, maybe this is happening. It’s been a long time since I was in grade school/middle school, so maybe nutritional education has improved.