If millions more people are obese than were obese 50 years ago, clearly something has changed systemically that has made people more sedentary and eating more. People 50 years ago were not paying more conscious attention to their health than people today, but the background environment of available food and sedentary jobs/entertainment were different.

The personal responsibility model of obesity works for individuals (including myself), but falls flat when discussing how to lower the weight of millions.

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buu700 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

What changed 50 years ago is the US government decided saturated fats were bad and complex carbohydrates were good, and began setting policy to rebuild the food supply and culture around that worldview. We're now living in the result of that population-wide experiment.

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Arodex 2 days ago | parent [-]

Nothing has changed. Fat and sugar are appetizing, always have. The free market gave it to all of you by the truckload at the lowest price.

Try to assume your choices instead of blaming "the US government" and telling yourself fairytales.

	▲	buu700 a day ago \| parent [-]
		No, it was literally government policy. The free market didn't give us the McGovern committee or the following half-century of subsidies, regulations, and guidelines to promote low-fat diets. Markets don't exist in a vacuum. In this case, it was substantially shaped by state-driven incentives. If nothing had changed, we wouldn't be having this conversation. It's a historical fact that something did change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States#/....

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hammock 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

“Freedom works for me but I want to also control millions of other people, for the good of me and their own good since they don’t know any better”

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ligne 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

"Well you need to exercise more and eat more vegetables" is true, but it's only practicable advice if people have access to exercise facilities and healthy food, and the time to make use of them. Otherwise you may as well be blaming fire victims for not being incombustible.

	▲	hammock a day ago \| parent [-]
		“You need to x” is still the (apparently flawed?) personal responsibility model. Replace “you” with “we will do x to you whether you like it or not” and now we’re talking

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bjustin 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

“Finding and halting the boot stomping on your friends and neighbors is a violation of your friends’ and neighbors’ freedoms”

	▲	hammock a day ago \| parent [-]
		Sounds nice but is that what you really mean? The government created Covid, let it leak from a lab and now people want to give them power to force millions of innocent people take the medicine they also created. “Finding and halting the boot” would look a little different from that in my mind