I would like to pitch the idea that the obesity epidemic is a symptom of failed city infrastructure. Imagine if riding a bike was a no-friction activity; you walk out your door, you have a bike there and the bike lanes are treated as first-class infra instead of cars. Imagine how much more you would bike in this situation, and how much healthier you and everyone around you would be
You’re trying to find a problem for your solution.
The obesity epidemic actually due to the increased availability of ultra processed foods.
Is it? There’s primitive cultures that eat every kind of weird diet you can imagine, and they’re all thin and fit. It’s still kind of a mystery why exactly we can’t handle eating even a fraction like the historical Inuit, and just the processing itself shouldn’t change much.
Because ultra processed foods don’t fill us up but taste incredibly good. Technically the problem is overeating, but it’s a lot easier to overeat ultra processed foods.
I mean, which foods even count as ultraprocessed isn’t well defined. It’s not an ingredient, it’s not a technique. OP was trying to find a problem for their solution, you’re right, but lack of exercise is just as big of a suspect if not bigger.
They’re engineered to be very appealing for sure, but do you have a link for the not filling us up bit? That one’s new to me.
Thanks. Interesting that it’s the texture that’s suspect here - it’s thought our jaws are too small to fit wisdom teeth for the exact same soft-food reason.
As far as I know there isn’t good science yet or strict definition, so nothing really to source except personal experience
One of us is confused.
I’m saying that ultra processed foods - food that have had their nutrients stripped and replaced with sugars and fats and chemicals - are more readily available. We have an ancient instinct to store fats and sugars due to food shortages. Ultra processed foods are pleasurable to eat and our biology specifically deals with them by storing them as fat.
I have never heard anyone say it’s a mystery that we can’t eat like our ancestors. On the contrary, there are a hundred fad diets specifically designed to do just this. If you look into “blue zones”, you’ll find people living long healthy lifestyles free of ultra processed foods and eating and exercising more similarly to our ancient ancestors.
The traditional Inuit diet is pretty much pure whale blubber. A bit of fish and marine mammal meat on the side. Essentially no plants, because they just don’t grow well on permafrost.
There’s another tribe I can’t remember the name of that mostly just eats a certain high-calorie nut. By “can’t handle”, I meant without getting really fat eating that way. (The blue zones themselves are all over the place)
That might certainly be one factor, but my intuition is that the primary driver is still todays diet. Things like soda drinks that let you consume teaspoons of pure sugar in an instant without appropriate feedback simply didn’t exist in the past.
As a lifelong bike commuter who’s fifty pounds overweight and prediabetic, this isn’t the cure-all you seem to think.
It’d be great, but it won’t be enough.
Not just obesity, but also the loneliness epidemic, since mental health is boosted as much by the weak relationships of the people that one sees regularly, day-to-day, whose name one might not even know, as it is by close, intimate relationships. (And even the latter are suffering the loss of social contact.)
One of the reasons I don’t think I’ll ever want to live outside of NYC. I walk every day. Sometimes take a bike. It’s much nicer than the car world of the suburbs I grew up in
The USA’s two-party system is a fucking farce and we’re not going to see major, widespread change under either party. But if I bring this up I get called a “Russian bot” and accused of telling people not to vote… even though I vote.
Speaking of real, the USA is not a law of nature. It’s only been around for a short time, historically, and it took a bloody civil war to keep it going this long. The warning that we have to vote for the correct color every time, or the country falls apart, is wrong. Voting for the correct color and the country still falls apart is possible if that color can’t make the fundamental changes needed.
Don’t worry (/s), I think you’re down to one now.
The issue is that the same people that would lose votes from doing so would have to change the system. Which obviously means they have no incentive to do so.
In healthy democracies reform happens anyway, though because there’s grassroot demand and politicians willing to capitalise on it one way or the other. It’s just that that’s not one.
The problem is that the US first needs to be in a stable place in order to break free of the 2 party system. I don’t think we’re going to see that in our lifetimes.
I’ll also add that one of the two parties actively wants to see me and anyone like me dead, so there’s a lot of pressure for many of us on simply surviving
I’ll also add that one of the two parties actively wants to see me and anyone like me dead, so there’s a lot of pressure for many of us on simply surviving
Oh, for sure, hence why I’m not anti-voting. I still want to save my ass in the short term, even while thinking about the long term.
We’ve gotten a ton of change with trump. That’s why it’s felt so disruptive. Might not be the kind of change you were hoping for, but it’s certainly change.
STAR and RCV is growing among some states and counties. Have hope.
When you pop a balloon, the helium floats to space and is lost into the solar wind forever. Unlike every other element we could run out, and nobody cares. (Helium is important for a lot of serious things, too)
There’s more pressing issues, of course, but if you want one that’s very unknown compared to it’s long-term significance, there you go.
Trans people will be murdered over bathroom laws. You want a masculine bearded guy in the women’s room? That’s exactly what anti-trans bathroom laws require. Those guys are gonna get shot.
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Disabilities’ rights. If we grow old, we’re gonna be dealing with some type of disability one way or an other. Sometimes it happens earlier. Plus, helping disabled people can sometimes also help non disabled people by making their lives easier.
A lot of problems, such as homelessness and increase in illness is caused by disability. People not being able to work anymore, or even work not being able to accomodate their needs cause homelessness. Covid basically making a lot of people immuncompromised, yet no work is being done to encourage people wearing masks by the government or other influencial entities.
Overpopulation.
It used a problem that was talked about a lot in the latest century. Then some countries reduced their nativity by their own and it was marked as “it’s going to solve itself”.
Problem is, population keeps growing worldwide. Even in these countries with reduced nativity, population keeps growing via immigration.
Also the main drive on reduced nativity was increase of the quality of life and feminism. I think both things are in danger. Quality of life has been descending in later years, and feminism is being eaten by an increase in religious madness all across the world.
So I think overpopulation is still going strong and it will keep going stronger. And it will be a self induced problem, because overpopulation will reduce quality of life, and a reduced quality of life will make people breed more.
I actually think is the number one problem, way more dangerous that climate change. Because, among other things, there’s nothing more polluting than a human being, the more humans in this Earth the more impossible will be fight back climate change. Humans pollute.
And the worst is that no one cares about this issue, and people tend to become very violent when you mention it as a problem.
The thing about that though, is that to reduce the population in the least invasive, most peaceful way, is progress. And I mean progress in the geographical locations that are currently being kept from progressing. Human rights and progressive ideas, better healthcare, worker’s rights; these are all crucial to achieving lower birthrates. It’s an intersectional problem, always has been, always will be.
I worry that with declining birth rates capitalism will fall. OK maybe that is a good thing.
I recently watched this Thoughty2 video on YouTube that touched on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRN2p7sSL_Y
He essentially concludes that, at this point, technology has been able to mitigate the overpopulation fears that have existed up until now.
I full agree with you. Just because we can exist on the planet does not mean we’re better off. We’re already living with the consequences of over population.
The first thing we need to do is change our eating habits. The over-farming of land is increasing the need for chemicals to grow food - not to mention climate change. Bird flu is coming. The manner in which we have to raise animals is atrocious and leading to pandemics. Everything is full of antibiotics so farmers and ranchers don’t have to throw away “bad stock”. Which of course is due to the increasing need to produce more food.
I think the worst part is that when this is brought up people blame the corporations and the governments. They’re right that legislators should do more about this but, in America at least, the people are the one’s who are supposed to have the power. We’re supposed to make choices and cast votes for the world we want to live in. Instead, we keep making the same choices that give corporations more and more power.
America is torn between wanting all the freedom to make their own choices while complaining that government isn’t doing enough.
That the 105 male/100 female birth to young adult ratio needs a fix to get to 100/100 at least.
The distraction comes from me being not too kind to either of the duo-culture of the US empire on this issue.
I thought female birth ratio was higher than males
It isn’t. More males die during pregnancy and infancy, which used to result into more girls than boys by age 5 two-hundred years ago, but nowadays there are only more women at old age.
By itself this is not that big of an issue. A much bigger issue is the gender imbalance that you find in certain localities due to local governments, universities and companies not taking this gender imbalance into account. But I’m glad that you brought up this issue.
I disagree. Even the discussion on gender imbalance gets warped because of this as sex ratio is never taken into account in the discussion. Even if it is, it’ll be forgotten or discarded.
