

Our Big Problem - vrikhter
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704423504575212281013855148.html

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AngryParsley
Obesity is a complex problem and blah blah blah insert standard disclaimers
here, but I think there are two things that, combined, contribute
significantly to the problem:

1\. Food is cheap

2\. Most people enjoy eating food

Solutions include: Make food more expensive (tax it) or alter peoples' sense
of hunger. The latter is actually not infeasible. There are drugs that
decrease appetite.

Another idea takes some explaining: I think obesity has quite a bit in common
with smoking. The biggest difference is that people need food to survive.
Still, the solution to decreasing smoking could work on obesity. Smoking used
to be quite popular, but today it isn't nearly as socially acceptable. In most
places in the US, cigarrettes are taxed in both currency and social cost.
Jokes at a smoker's expense are acceptable. It's not uncommon for friends or
coworkers of smokers to suggest they quit.

The same is not true for obesity. Mocking fat people is considered rude.
Suggesting they cut down on certain foods is also a delicate matter. An excuse
for this taboo is that many fat people can't help it. They were born with
genes that caused their metabolisms to run slower, or they feel hunger more
strongly than average. But the same is true for many smokers. Their genes make
them more susceptible to nicotine, or cause them to feel cravings more
strongly than average. Yet we allow poking fun at smokers.

So while this suggestion won't be popular, I think it would be effective:
Society needs to treat fatties more like smokers. If you see an overweight
person doing something that will most likely increase their weight, picture
them as they will be in 20 years: dying from diabetes and heart disease.
Vision failing, fingers and toes pale from poor circulation. Possibly even
missing a few digits. A premature death; an under-lived life, lacking many
experiences healthy people take for granted. They never went rock climbing or
surfing. Their extra weight causes them frequent back and joint pain. Think of
all that suffering, and think of how you have an opportunity to prevent it.
You probably won't be thanked for it, but you might very well save someone's
life.

(I'm only half-joking in that last paragraph.)

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yummyfajitas
Actually, the last paragraph is a good idea for another reason. For now, all
the costs of obesity are internal costs paid for solely by the obese person.
It's like me buying video games - I pay, I get the game, no one besides me and
GameStop has a reason to care.

However, as of 2014, the costs of obesity become _external_ costs - that is,
costs paid for by all. It's more like a factory polluting - the obese person
gets all the benefits of their activity, but impose costs on the rest of
society. We should try to internalize those costs with an added tax (much like
pollution taxes).

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dagw
As long as they have some form of health insurance it's an external cost even
today. Except it's spread among those who have the same insurance company
rather than the whole taxpaying population.

Also even if they are completely uninsured it's still an external cost as
chances are they'll end up at the hospital emergency room at some point, and
being uninsured, the bill will end up with the taxpayers one way or the other.
So really the internal vs external thing won't change much.

That being said I'm not as such against selective taxing of foods.

~~~
yummyfajitas
If the obese are paying their actuarial cost, then it's not an externality. So
in any state where it is legal to charge the obese a higher premium, the obese
are already paying their fair share.

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pmccool
Hmmm. A a pretty trite observation (obesity is on the increase), a lot of
ranting about tangential issues like the splitering of the family unit and
some half-hearted genuflection in the direction of possible solutions. Oh, and
the country, or possibly the world, has gone to the dogs.

Yawn.

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c00p3r
The usual case is that people cannot distinguish between the bodily feelings
under a mild stress and the feeling of hunger. So, they eat to become calmer,
while actually they don't need additional calories this time.

btw, most of word's religions praise the fasting as the method to improve
self-control and health.

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rsaarelm
Just to mess this up further, there are some recent studies into ego depletion
(basically willpower failures) which indicate that low blood sugar can make
self-control more difficult, as the brain's executive function doesn't work
that well when it has less chemical energy.

The obvious corollary would be that dieting that allows blood sugar to drop
too low is going to make it harder to avoid binge eating lapses. Would it work
the other way too, so that successful exercise of self-control while fasting
adapts the brain to maintain good executive function even when low on glucose?

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jules
Go running after dinner. I assure you that one will not overeat the second
time.

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pmccool
Ironically, the things least likely to make one throw up if you exercise right
after eating them are the sorts of foods one should generally avoid if at all
worried about obesity...

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AngryParsley
I thought that was the joke: If you eat much before running, you will feel
terrible and likely vomit during the run. The second time, you'll learn to not
eat as much beforehand.

I usually don't eat about 4 hours prior to running. That means running before
breakfast or before dinner.

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pmccool
Yeah, that was how I understood the joke too. What I found ironic is that if I
wanted to eat during vigourous exercise, or straight before, it'd be your
basic loads-of-carbs-in-easy-to-digest-form kind of deal: the exact kind of
thing I'd shun if I was trying to lose weight.

