To frame the discussion as one of either/or alternatives is self-defeating, a more productive framing is what are the various strategies we can employ to reduce obesity?
There are plenty which are unrelated to self-control or personal discipline. One is a sugar tax (not a huge fan personally but it exists).
One I do like is to regulate the advertising and labeling of food. Frankly I'd like to know how many calories I'm eating or being persuaded to eat, pretty much all the time. This is a work in progress with the FDA gradually expanding the types of restaurants that are required to disclose caloric and nutrition info about their food. Frankly I'd like to see it required in advertisements too, if you're advertising a pizza, the advertisement should disclose that there are 2,000 calories in that pizza, many people actually are not aware.
Not that I ever thought they were serving health food at the Cheesecake Factory, but I recently learned that their peanut butter cheesecake is 1650 calories per slice! Almost a full day's calories in one slice of cake! Nearly everyone I've talked to about it knew it was a gut buster but no one guessed that high.
Those cheesecakes are only for special occasions now and it's because C.F. is required to disclose calories, I'd be fatter if not for this simple government intervention. Nothing to do with self control. Apologies to C.F. but with the nation's obesity rate cresting 50% I consider this a wholly reasonable imposition on their free speech rights or whatever.
> Those cheesecakes are only for special occasions now and it's because C.F. is required to disclose calories, I'd be fatter if not for this simple government intervention. Nothing to do with self control
How is eating a cake from a store "nothing to do with self control". It's not like you were buying vegetables and turns out big sugar made the vegetables be worse for you. You not knowing if the cake was 800 calories or 1.6k calories makes it no less about self control. Even to avoid eating it at 1.6k, it's still all just self control.
No, it's much easier to pass on dessert when you know it's 1600 calories as opposed to if you think it's much less. In essence the disclosure of how bad that particular item really is reduces the amount of willpower required to avoid it. If this wasn't true, all these restaurants wouldn't have kept the calorie counts of these dishes secret until the government forced them to share that info.
I mean this is common sense, the more clearly you understand the negatives of an action, the more likely you are to avoid it. And we have plenty of evidence that this works to alter people's behavior through looking at the effects of e.g. cigarette labeling.
Like up until the 1950s we actually didn't have good evidence that cigarettes were bad for you, and doctors actually got on TV and endorsed specific brands, so a lot of people weren't sure. Eventually the studies were produced and doctors started recommending against smoking and smoking started to decline. It didn't decline because people became Badass Willpower Monks, it declined because they were given access to more and better information.
"Less self control needed" which is your argument in this follow-up comment is very different from "Nothing to do with self control" in your original comment.
There are plenty which are unrelated to self-control or personal discipline. One is a sugar tax (not a huge fan personally but it exists).
One I do like is to regulate the advertising and labeling of food. Frankly I'd like to know how many calories I'm eating or being persuaded to eat, pretty much all the time. This is a work in progress with the FDA gradually expanding the types of restaurants that are required to disclose caloric and nutrition info about their food. Frankly I'd like to see it required in advertisements too, if you're advertising a pizza, the advertisement should disclose that there are 2,000 calories in that pizza, many people actually are not aware.
Not that I ever thought they were serving health food at the Cheesecake Factory, but I recently learned that their peanut butter cheesecake is 1650 calories per slice! Almost a full day's calories in one slice of cake! Nearly everyone I've talked to about it knew it was a gut buster but no one guessed that high.
Those cheesecakes are only for special occasions now and it's because C.F. is required to disclose calories, I'd be fatter if not for this simple government intervention. Nothing to do with self control. Apologies to C.F. but with the nation's obesity rate cresting 50% I consider this a wholly reasonable imposition on their free speech rights or whatever.