Ask Lemmy

What needs to be done and what will be done are unfortunately never going to align as long as someone stands to get rich on it.

What needs to be done:

• Healthier food options
• Healthier work/life balance
• Education on what is healthy and unhealthy
• Encouragement to daily physical

Why this will never be done:

• Too much money to be made on "tasty" premade meals, which "tasty" and "profitable" require lots of flavor enhancers and preservatives, both very calorically imbalanced / dense and also toxic in large quantities (toxicity is how preservatives work). If you don't flavor enhance, your competitor will for cheaper and people won't buy your option. Also each growing industry insisting their food in solo is the healthiest when it is not. I'm pointing at you corn and grain industries.
• 40 hr 9-5 8/5 work week is only office workers. Servicemen and retail sales often work 10-12+ hours per day or have all hours on call.
• points at every part of the American education system and its exported policies other countries sometimes take up
• Point 2 is the reason a lot of people don't exercise. There is no time to do so.
• Healthcare is expensive. When there is money to be made, it is always in healthcare. If you can't afford a consumer product, you don't buy it. If you can't afford a surgery or medicine to save your life, you die. This simple fact makes it nearly impossible to have any say in how much a treatment costs.

This is not just an American problem. Other western countries have this issue as well, and I hope people in other nations see the danger and keep themselves healthy.

Idk man but the root issue is people have a massive lack of discipline. With discipline and will, almost anything personal like this can be solved. I guess it's an issue of the education system... Not sure exactly

This is gonna be an unpopular take, but I vote for federally subsidized meth rations. I bet I'd be super productive and who needs sleep?

There’s no one single approach.

1. Stop overincentivizing HFCS; as a sugar replacement, its main feature is suppressing natural hormones that tell you “I’m full, let’s stop eating”. It’s a corn product, which often makes it a very “American” thing to support.
2. Design walkable communities. Many people can’t schedule out time to get exercise, but should get it regularly through their job or community.
3. Make programs designed to promote home cooking, ensuring people have time in their day to do it, adequate kitchen space, and buy-in from their family or lifemates. Many people live off take-out or ready meals, which means they don’t know what goes into it, and also don’t socialize with family.

Start re-educating treatlerites

Stop subsidizing animal feed. I'm not opposed to eating meat but it's easy to get too many calories per bite from it. Farm subsidies for human crops in order to keep farms stable is semi reasonable though. Local food forests (such as community maintained gardens along walking paths where people live and parks) I think are a great supplement to peoples diets and amenities for communities but aren't replacing staples anytime soon.

Limit food advertising for any meal over 800 calories. Limit the amount of money that can be paid for food advertising per business.

Mandatory cooking classes in schools for all genders.

The rest requires more radical solutions. Unfortunately a big part of it is our socioeconomic situation. One example low worker bargaining power leading to too few meaningful after work hours. Another is the push for hyper individualism, cooking 3 meal for 7 people once a week is easier then cooking 3 meals for one person everyday forever. Few of our living arrangements are built for potluck or communal cooking though. The resteraunt experience just isn't it either because of the strong dehumanization between staff and customer.

The other being mental health. Both in part from above but also constant comparison with imaginary people (advertisements, celebrities, and social media profiles for example). Better crisis support(I.e. not just cops and grippie socks). Community support. More access to therapy and pychiactrics (including for this topic peptides like glp-1). I am biased towards the last ones being "last resort". Not in a "oh you're at a breaking point and need help, let's try talking to your friends first before we can prescribe you something" kind bs way, but more so assume we, as a society, are already doing the rest first but also have easy access to professional services.

Walkable cities would help probally both improve community potential and exercise.

Lastly, if we drastically improve work life balance, have better self esteem and community support, improve our food, we could see exercise be a lot easier to solve. Access to physical game spaces is one way to help (again IF people have time and friends). Physical involvement with the community (cooking, collecting food, cleaning up the community garden, etc) honestly would be a huge step away from sedimentary lifestyle for a lot of people.

education about food would help. nutrition courses starting from a young age (veggies=smart choice, fried cheese=bad choice) carrying right through high school (insoluble fiber=smart choice, saturated fat=bad choice) that steadily increases the depth/complexity of what is essentially the same information would help.

caloric density is the main factor in choosing healthy options, but what is equally important is giving people the free time and resources to devote to both preparing food and the act of choosing itself (planning/prepping meals, grocery shopping, logging or otherwise tracking intake). when both of a family’s adults’ work day has to include an 8.5-hour shift with 2 hours of commute/preparation time, child care, cooking, cleaning, exercise, reading a couple of books per month, and more, you have to start prioritizing. the first things to go are cooking, exercise, reading, recreation. so the more the working class gets squeezed, the more a work day starts to look like: a 10-hour shift if you’re lucky enough to qualify for overtime, eat on your commute from a fast food place, get home and feed said garbage to your children whom you are steadily poisoning now (just look into the effects of the ingredients and additives that go into a mcdonalds meal and tell me you would ever eat there again if you weren’t hopelessly addicted to those ingredients and the convenience), and then half-assing the rest of your life’s upkeep because you have no energy from being overworked, getting no exercise, and eating trash day in, day out.

the obesity epidemic is 100% a problem of modern capitalism. it stems from min-maxing your life’s profitability in terms of how you use your time and money. gym memberships are expensive and a routine requires 10 hours a week you don’t have. hiking trips and other outdoor activities take time and equipment you can’t afford. proper diet and cooking take time and money you don’t have. it self-reinforces when you no longer have energy to develop new habits and can no longer see a way out of it.

it’s gotten so bad that now people are cutting children and social interaction out of their lives because they don’t have the time, money, or energy.

instead of improving these conditions, the current US regime’s solution is to force us to submit by outlawing abortion and probably contraceptives at some point, to tie healthcare to employment status, to reduce public assistance and welfare, among other social paradigms that isolate us and disempower us.

The education system needs to be redeveloped from the ground up. It's a 19th century system in the 21st century.

Physical Education needs to be prioritized as does social engagement.

Okay i am assuming you are well meaning so i hope you have kept an open mind and are actually interested in "solutions". I am also well meaning but my frustration will come through in my comment. I am urging you to actually read up on the issue bc you have not .

There is no epidemic. Fat people don't need to be eradicated, be mindful about what you put out in the world, talking about fat people like THEY are a disease is incredible dehumanising. Other "unhealthy" habits we talk about are something you do not what you are.

Imagine we would treat everyone who isn't perfectly fit like we treat fat people, imagine people commenting on your body all of the time because you aren't jacked. We are accepting and even in favor of a level of virtriol towards fat people that would be unimaginable if done to any other kind of populace.

If you are worried for the health of people than go from there, what are the specifics you care about? Because i can guarante you thin people have all the same problems. I am thin as a stick but certainly unhealthy as fuck.

Here are some points for you to think about

1. The health sector isn't perfect, doctors can believe in myths. Just like black people and women don't get the pain medication they need fat people often don't get the care they need because doctors are solely focused on their health. If you listen to fat people they will tell you all about it. BMI is not a great tool since everyone is different and just having a higher BMI is not enough information to go on.
2. Fat peoples higher risks often don't go away when they lose weight. We need more studies here.
3. Stress is bad for your overall health. How stressful do you think it is when everyone and their mother makes your body their problem. Poor people are more often stressed too.
4. Lets be honest people don't care about fat peoples health, they care because they don't like seeing it. We are all unhealthier and unfitter than we could be but for everyone else it is " don't tell others what to do"
5. The constant talk about weight triggers eating disorders and make fat people gain even more weight this is a fact not an opinion.
6. Everything can become a healthrisk, boxers destroy their brain, basejumpers regulary fall to their death, bodybuilders take too many drugs. Its not an epidemic people will do people things.

There is so much more to it, one of my favorite health podcasts is "maintenance phase" give it a listen they talk alot about all kinds of health myths.

So just don't focus on weight focus on overall health and what people need to succeed and if people are still fat let them be fat. They can decide for themselves.

give them all ozempic or GLP-1. almost every method, they want quick fixes, or dont want do dieting or exercising or they dont want to do it. glp-1 has a side benefit in helping with other addictions.

Why does it need solving in the first place?

Pay people to lose weight and then pay an even better rate for maintaining a healthy weight

Mounjaro to all.

Switch to Scientific Socialism where people aren't overworked and in deep debt over shitty capitalism.

Whats the link? Stress, obviously.