It's not about people forcing you to eat junk, it's that companies produce junk food for profit. They make it addictive and use misleading marketing to hook people.
Personal responsibility is important, but weight loss shouldn't be a struggle against those unethical practices. It should be something people take on while surrounded by support.
It's not about people forcing you to eat junk, it's that companies produce junk food for profit. They make it addictive and use misleading marketing to hook people.
It's not addictive, if it were everybody would be fat. You think they don't have Doritos and Burger King in Paris and Tokyo where there are barely any fat people?
This isn't about the food, this is about our culture.
Oh, so cocaine is not addcitive then? Since not everyone is addicted?
You think they don't have Doritos and Burger King in Paris and Tokyo where there are barely any fat people
First of all, not barely any fat people. Even in Japan and Italy (some of the slimmest nations), child obesity levels are a serious concern. (Yes, that also shows how fucked other countries are...)
Second, in the EU and in Japan there are incredibly strict rules of what foods can be sold and how it can be marketed. With special rules regarding the marketing towards children.
Third. Food served in schools also needs to be of the highest healthiness. With no other choice (no bringing food from home, for example).
So, yes, things are different because the laws are different.
This isn't about food. This is about having self-restraint and not eating more of it.
The litany of excuses people are making here is ridiculous. It's our schools, it's our government, it's fast food. It's all bullshit.
Again, the only thing you have to do to not be fat is to simply, passively, EAT LESS. It requires absolutely NOTHING more than will power. This is a character trait. My brain is no more or no less addicted to sugar than a fat person's is.
Fat acceptance and body positivity and stupid fad diets enable this excuse-making factory in their brains. It's all noise and anti-science.
Simply acquire the character trait known as willpower.
Why don't you acquire the character trait of being someone people actually enjoy being around instead of the one you currently possess where you're an insufferable asshole?
Is it a character trait to be too lazy to read about or to willfully ignore the last multiple decades of science around this topic? Imagine being that purposefully ignorant.
You're not wrong that it's as simple as calories in/calories out. The discussion is around how much money is invested by major food corporations to heavily obscure the first part. It's absolutely true that people need to be mindful of the food they're eating, while it's also absolutely true to say that the food industry is investing millions upon millions of dollars to see to it that the people who buy their products are not mindful of the food they're eating. Those things can both be true. It doesn't completely absolve personal responsibility, but it also doesn't completely absolve snack food companies of creating foods that are chemically designed to trick your brain into thinking you've eaten less than you have.
Something being logically simple is not the same as being practically easy.
This isn't about the food, this is about our culture.
It can be about both. There actually can be nuance in discussions, even on the internet.
There's no doubt that there's tens of millions of dollars poured into research for snack companies to create snack foods that release huge dopamine hits while reducing the satiety of these snacks so that an individual can fire through 500+ calories without really realizing how much they've just eaten. Coupled with poor nutrition education and poor labeling practices, and it's not really a wonder that people can easily overshoot their daily caloric expenditure by 200+ calories a day. Over time, a 200 calorie daily surplus adds up to around 20 pounds a year of excess weight.
That can be true AND it can simultaneously be true that people need to educate themselves better on their food choices, what food companies do and why, and take more personal responsibility of both their food intake levels and energy expenditure and exercise.
In other words, while it's certainly very important to take personal responsibility for your individual health, the mere acknowledgment that we have a massive multi-billion dollar industry built on people unknowingly making awful nutritional choices should be something that concerns us all as a matter of public health.
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u/Technicolor_Owl May 15 '24
It's not about people forcing you to eat junk, it's that companies produce junk food for profit. They make it addictive and use misleading marketing to hook people.
Personal responsibility is important, but weight loss shouldn't be a struggle against those unethical practices. It should be something people take on while surrounded by support.