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[Brentai]

Feel the need to chime in to note that my physical state collapsed almost immediately once I got really busy.  I've managed to climb somewhere back near the peak by essentially inventing for myself an exercise routine designed around the concept of a five minute coffee break.  All I can do is be thankful for once that I don't work out of a structured environment, because I'm sure if I got down and started planking in the middle of a cubicle nest someone would come along and kick me.

[Bongo Bill]

I can definitely confirm the bit about healthy comfort food from personal experienced. I am privileged.

IM, tl;dr, but I think the best way to sum up my feelings here and probably make someone's head explode because I know it'll be misinterpreted but fuck it.

If T.V. is responsible for Bulimia, video games are responsible for murder.

I think that I am about to get into an argument with a person with whom I am in agreement, but here goes. That's a good point, except the statistics are actually against TV this time. Rates of eating disorders don't go down with the advent of TV the way rates of violent crime did with the advent of murdersims.

If we want to talk about the media, I don't think that it is the size of the actresses so much as the scripts' occasional obsession with weight that causes the problem. People, especially young people, often mimic the social attitudes that they are exposed to. A depiction of a social scenario in which minor changes in appearance are regarded as a big enough deal for the entire cast to worry about for half an hour plants a seed which can bloom in the fertile soil of a person's pre-existing proclivity toward anxiety or self-consciousness.

It is in the nature of worry to be easy to start irrationally, and it is in the nature of those of an anxious disposition to transform worry into obsession. And much television writing thrives on the perpetuation of little worries. If it weren't weight, it would be something else. Very probably there's quite a lot else already, but it is not as noticeable since it is not so closely related to an evergreen gender-relations issue.

[Kazz]

If T.V. is responsible for Bulimia, video games are responsible for murder.

because they are the same fucking thing.

I blame the car.

the car is responsible for lots of terrible stuff.  obesity (drive-thru anyone?), oil dependency (with countries that hate us), pollution, deadly accidents (esp. involving dogs, poor innocent dogs), a lot of debt (i can't believe how many people get cars and then spend more than half their money paying them off and maintaining them and gassing them up), soul-crushing multi-hour commutes, and NASCAR.

[yyler]

I was just saying that girls would certainly be able to feel more positive about their weight if they had any fat role models.

• Queen Latifah
• Rosie O'Donnell (in the 90s)
• Rosanne (in the 90s)
• Star Jones (pre freak out)
• Oprah
• Jennifer Hudson
• Liza Snyder
• Nikki Blonsky
• Kirsti Ally
• Jordin Sparks
• Jennifer Coolidge
• America Ferrara
• Missy Elliot
• Aretha Franklin
• Kathleen Turner
• Jessica Simpson
• Sally Struthers
• Carnie Wilson
• Kathy Bates
• Kelly Clarkson
• Girl ogre from Shrek
• Ms. Doubtfire
• The old woman from Everybody Loves Raymond

[JDigital]

Tom Hodgkinson says that the car isn't worth it. When you add up all the hours you spend maintaining the car and working to pay for the car's expenses, you're quicker walking.

[Mongrel]

Tom Hodgkinson says that the car isn't worth it. When you add up all the hours you spend maintaining the car and working to pay for the car's expenses, you're quicker walking.

Most people I know (with a slightly higher incidence in the US than in Canada) are trapped, as they live too far away from their job to do anything but drive to it. In many cases they live too far from ANYTHING to not drive. Such is life in many suburbs. To say nothing of the towns that don't even HAVE sidewalks. And not everyone can move close to their job - especially in a two-income household.

And of course in many American towns people will spit on you or run you over if you're walking or riding a bike, such is the threat you represent to their lifestyle. Ha ha you think I'm exaggerating.

The cost of everyone having their own house with their own yard is that you have to drive everywhere. As long as we want that lifestyle, we'll have to pay for it. If we want healthier communities, a lot more folks are going to have to live in townhouses (rowhouses), condos or apartments.

[Mongrel]

I was just saying that girls would certainly be able to feel more positive about their weight if they had any fat role models.

• Queen Latifah
• Rosie O'Donnell (in the 90s)
• Rosanne (in the 90s)
• Star Jones (pre freak out)
• Oprah
• Jennifer Hudson
• Liza Snyder
• Nikki Blonsky
• Kirsti Ally
• Jordin Sparks
• Jennifer Coolidge
• America Ferrara
• Missy Elliot
• Aretha Franklin
• Kathleen Turner
• Jessica Simpson
• Sally Struthers
• Carnie Wilson
• Kathy Bates
• Kelly Clarkson
• Girl ogre from Shrek
• Ms. Doubtfire
• The old woman from Everybody Loves Raymond

I sure hope you're making a joke here.

[Transportation]

Obesity is, in my experience, generally a sign of poor impulse control and a lack of self-respect.  These are not attractive traits.

blackness is, in my experience, generally a sign of criminal behavior and a lack of education.

Lack of impulse control has a direct causal link to becoming obese (not really sure what lack of self-respect is referring to).

Your statement, on the other hand, is a correlation as stealing things does not, in my experience, turn you into a black person.

I haven't really looked into the issue, but Iron Mongrel might be onto something as the much thinner EU countries also have waaaay lazier labor laws. Of course they also have better health care and the U.S. did not always have this problem, so

I imagine mother nature will take care of the automobile dependency, at least.

[Pacobird]

Lack of impulse control has a direct causal link to becoming obese (not really sure what lack of self-respect is referring to).

Letting yourself turn in to a blubbering hambeast does not betray a lack of self-respect?

[Mongrel]

I haven't really looked into the issue, but Iron Mongrel might be onto something as the much thinner EU countries also have waaaay lazier labor laws. Of course they also have better health care and the U.S. did not always have this problem, so

The thing is you can't really look at it from that angle. They have those labour laws because of the culture they have over there. You can't just impose different labour laws from above and expect things to get better - there has to be a significant change in attitudes over time. Europe has lax labour laws, good health care etc. because they value those things. Though I'm certainly not a big EU booster. There's plenty of things Europe gets completely wrong too.

To be fair, I'm not sure if wholesale cultural change is fully possible. National character and habits are sometimes ingrained so deeply that it continues for centuries, surviving the complete collapse or replacement of government, or even the dissolution of the country as a defined area. Just ask Russia. Or the Middle East. Trying to impose cultural change with mere legislation may be totally hopeless.

Then again, there have been some isolated successes. The Liberal Party of Canada made multiculturalism a cornerstone of the Canadian identity by ramrodding through all kinds of legislation and backing it up with money, government power, and altered school curriculums and (most importantly) by consistently sticking to those guns for several decades.

That's why I think there needs to be a clear public discussion regarding the obesity epidemic and what says about our culture as a whole. If an issue is publicly dicussed, putting it on everyone's mind and the consequences are of the situation are clearly defined, it goes a long way towards encouraging a true cultural change.

[Beat Bandit]

I can definitely confirm the bit about healthy comfort food from personal experienced. I am privileged.

IM, tl;dr, but I think the best way to sum up my feelings here and probably make someone's head explode because I know it'll be misinterpreted but fuck it.

If T.V. is responsible for Bulimia, video games are responsible for murder.

I think that I am about to get into an argument with a person with whom I am in agreement, but here goes. That's a good point, except the statistics are actually against TV this time. Rates of eating disorders don't go down with the advent of TV the way rates of violent crime did with the advent of murdersims.

The point I made poorly (because, honestly, I figured fuck it I'll give trying to be the next Guild a chance) was that you can blame media or what-have-you for telling people what to think or do but when it comes down to it, if you rely on those influences to decide how you act then even if those factors weren't there you'd be basing your self off something else.

[Pacobird]

To be fair, I'm not sure if wholesale cultural change is fully possible. National character and habits are sometimes ingrained so deeply that it continues for centuries, surviving the complete collapse or replacement of government, or even the dissolution of the country as a defined area. Just ask Russia. Or the Middle East. Trying to impose cultural change with mere legislation may be totally hopeless.

Trolling aside, the obesity epidemic in America is almost wholly a result of the availability of processed foods almost to the exclusion of non-processed alternatives.  I lived in Europe for 6 months, ate....really well and drank like a fish, and ended up losing 15 pounds because I was not eating processed shit, because it was simply not available.

[Mongrel]

Anecdotal what?



Leaving aside everything else that's wrong with that statement, there's plenty of frighteningly fatty non-processed food in the US. It's just what the RICH american fatties eat.

[Royal☭]

I think Paco is wrong to attribute any rise in obesity solely to processed food, but there is merit to an increase in saturated fat in cheaply produced fast food.  There's evidence of an increase in obesity with lower-income, almost directly the result of cheap foods heavy in saturated fat.  And it's not because people are setting out to just eat bad food, but because it's easily available.  When you work all day to make ends meet and need to feed a family, it's just easier to head to McDonald's or Burger King and purchase a few 99 cent foods than it is to spend hours cooking and preparing a meal.


The biggest problem is that society at large views the obesity epidemic as the problem, when in fact it is only a symptom of a larger problem.  We can try and shame people or encourage them to eat healthy and exercise, but as long as income gaps exist and it becomes harder to access healthy foods, Americans are going to get fatter and in poorer health.


And people who then turn around and attempt to shame obese people by trying to relate them all to being losers with poor impulse-control and a lack of self-respect are pretty shitty individuals who do nothing but contribute to the problem.

[Misha]

speaking as a fat guy who likes a lot of volume in his food, I feel like part of the problem is the sheer caloric density of a lot of the shit we eat. a double quarter pounder with cheese from mcdonalds does not by itself come close to filling me up but it's still 700 or more calories. this means I personally try to avoid mcdonalds when possible, but I'm sure tons of people don't even think about it.

[Transportation]

Lack of impulse control has a direct causal link to becoming obese (not really sure what lack of self-respect is referring to).

Letting yourself turn in to a blubbering hambeast does not betray a lack of self-respect?

Strangely that sentence did not make sense a few hours ago. I suppose it was just contradicting with a few articles about the (presumably) minority of the self-righteously obese. So, never mind!

And people who then turn around and attempt to shame smokers by trying to relate them all to being losers with poor impulse-control and a lack of self-respect

Seems to be working well enough, actually.

And I'm quite sure fast food is more expensive than actually cooking and historically the poor have had far worse working hours. So, striking the problem up to income inequality seems a bit excessive.

[Royal☭]

Actually, you know what reduces smoking more than shaming them?  The taxes on cigarettes.  If we taxed saturated fat heavily, we might see a similar decline in obesity.

And I'm quite sure fast food is more expensive than actually cooking and historically the poor have had far worse working hours. So, striking the problem up to income inequality seems a bit excessive.

ANECDOTE: I go to school at 8 in the morning, then head to work until I get home around 6:30.  After a long day, I don't feel much inclined to cook anything, especially if my food isn't already prepared.  It's much easier to grab fast food than prepare a whole meal from scratch.  And many of the cheapest prepared meals (canned food, microwave dinners) are about as bad for me as McDonald's.  This is all without me having kids to take care of.

But, yeah, you're right, fast food is more expensive than cooking, if you're able to derive multiple uses from one meal.  But low-income families can still afford to go out and eat at McDonald's because the trade off is they don't have to cook and if you have several kids then the problem of feeding them all becomes greater.  I don't mean to imply that poor will automatically equal fat, just that it becomes significantly harder to fight back against obesity when one is poor, much like it's harder to fight back against sickness and other social maladies.

[Bongo Bill]

Obesity is something that you have to allow to happen to yourself. I don't see how that is "shaming" the obese in anyway; it's just a statement of fact. There are, of course, a number of factors that make that decision easier, and those are still fundamentally what ought to be addressed, rather than the attitudes of those who make the decision. But we shouldn't allow a sociological perspective of the problem to cause us to forget just who it was that ate all the burgers.

[Pacobird]

Anecdotal what?

I don't see statistics/studies/professional opinions cited anywhere in this thread.

And people who then turn around and attempt to shame obese people by trying to relate them all to being losers with poor impulse-control and a lack of self-respect are pretty shitty individuals who do nothing but contribute to the problem.

Transportation and BB put it well, but there is certainly room for personal responsibility in this.  Being obese is self-destructive and harmful to society, and has no rational benefits.  That being so, the process of "education" necessarily includes shaming when people already know Big Macs are bad for them.

Taxing high-fructose corn syrup is all well and good but "politically unrealistic" does not even begin to touch it.

[Royal☭]

I guess I don't consider telling a portion of the population than they are "self-destructive and harmful to society" to be the best solution to the problem, or that even having such an attitude is at all constructive.  Maybe we should try and encourage poor people to get rich by telling them how lazy and stupid they are.  When you look at a problem and you're only way of thinking is to start deriding a person for their station in life, you help no one and you accomplish nothing.

That's not to say that some fat people are personally irresponsible, but to make the blanket statement towards all of them is bigoted and shows you have only a limited worldview.  We could try encouraging people who are in situations where eating and living healthy is difficult to just stop being so fat, or we could try and look for exterior factors that contribute to the problem.

Taxing high-fructose corn syrup is all well and good but "politically unrealistic" does not even begin to touch it.

Or we could just determine that any attempt to address the situation is futile because people might disagree with us and kill the dialogue entirely.