> Now there’s something we agree on. If only we could agree that no one is stuffing cheeseburgers down people’s throat other than themselves. So close.
No one is saying that it is forced. What I am saying is that your sense of moral superiority for the fact you aren't is misplaced.
Let's give you an anecdote: Up until 18 or so, I was a stick. I went from being a stick to getting into powerlifting. I spent the first chunk of my 20s with a pretty great physique. Then as I had more and more responsibilities in life, I had less and less bandwidth to apply to things like cooking, exercise, etc. I slowly lost muscle mass. I slowly gained fat. I had never had food noise when I was skinny - I had never compulsively felt the need to eat, regardless of hunger. I had never had food just constantly occupy my brain. After my slow descent into obesity, something fundamental about my relationship with food had changed. When my stress was lower and I was skinny or later fit, staying that way was easy. It didn't require great mental fortitude, massive discipline, any of that. And when I got fat, it wasn't because I was craving food - it was because I had shit to do and couldn't take the time to cook. Or because I was going outwith friends or my SO and eating out was a huge part of my social life.
When I looked at myself and decided I had to change, I though I just needed to stop doing those things. Stop going out, force myself to take the time to cook and let other things fall on the backburner, etc. Except now I thought about and craved food in a way I never had before. I went from thinking exactly the same as you to realizing 'Oh shit. This wasn't as simple as I thought it was.'
I lost weight plenty of times. Significant weight - not just a few lb, but 30+. Multiple times. And then I'd get busy at work, I'd have family members going through problems and need help, I'd have a rough patch with an SO - as soon as my mental bandwidth got divided, the weight loss stopped and regain started.
Even if an individual is just always able to resist, it's almost entirely based on their genetics. If you want to feel superior because of something you had no control over, I guess that's your perogative.
> Once the shame around disgusting fattening food has reached a critical mass the problem will solve it self.
I think shame is a useful human emotion. We evolved it for a reason. But we also know that it has limits and that once those are reached more shame on top, it becomes counter productive.
> Ironically the excuses you make for them only worsen the issue. If fat people and the food they ate were appropriate shamed they both would cease.
No. Fat people experience plenty of shame, and for a huge amount of them, it only worsens the problem. Once you shame a person too much - once you make it about them and not about the action - they start to feel that they are unable to make a change because they have less worth than those people that can, and often end up losing even more control in their relationship with food or whatever else they are being shamed about.
> FYI in Japan fat people are ruthlessly bullied. Fat people are rare. Food for thought, pun intended.
This is not universally true - it is highly regional, though the most populated portion of Japan is definitely an area where this is largely the case. But even in areas where this is not the case, they still have significantly lower obesity rates. Osaka and Hokkaido are significantly more laid back about it than the Tokyo area, for example, but they still have relatively flat obesity rates.
Basically every fat person in the developed world receives more than the maximum effective dose of shame over their body and it hasn't made them stop being fat.