Overeating food addiction is far, far worse because of dramatically-reduced lifespan from many forms of cancer, chronic heart diseases and the lost of limbs and eyesight from Type II diabetes. A neighbor of my childhood home whom worked at Spectra Physics died within six months of uncontrolled diabetes. I also lost a great uncle whom went the same way more recently within about 10 months.
In northern Canada and American Indian reservations, that might be true. Some places, it's heroin and others, it's meth, paint thinner or glue. (Police, nurses and social workers typically know what's going around.)
From a health perspective, most doctors would probably argue smoking. Philip Morris International is targeting Asian countries where they are as ubiquitous in most realms of life as was soda advertisements to kids in schools.
Alcohol abuse culture is prevalent in military, universities and sales/management.
I think the impact varies with location and social circles, and is hard to qualtitatively measure (apart from lives, hospital visits/bills, lost wages) because it's very qualitative.
Over eating absolutely is a HUGE health issue, but it is oranges and apples.
Food is required for life.
Smoking, alcohol and drugs is non-essential and is self induced harm to the body for self-perceived emotional benefit. (Not to rule out emotional eating but...)
Perhaps sugar is a better comparison. It's only in the past few centuries that most humans have had access to sugarcane, it's definitely not required for survival and it's behind many many cases of fatty liver disease as well as diabetes, cancer and a host of issues stemming from metabolic disease.
Refined sugar is but almost everything we eat is sugar aka carbohydrates. Eating bread is the same as drink sugar to the body some would even say worst and we have been eating break since before written history. http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/is-it-...
Bread doesn't taste at all like sugar does, it doesn't metabolize at the same rate, and to the best of my knowledge we aren't using it as an additive to flavor nearly every other food we eat.
Nice broscience[1]. Setting that to one side for the moment, do you actually claim that bread tastes anything like sugar or that it's used to flavor practically all other foods as sugar is?
Not Bro science If you have diabetes eating bread, sugar, pasta, or any other high carbohydrate food/drink raises your blood sugar. That is the issue is blood sugar levels in your body not what it starts out as.
I down voted due to "Bro Science" remark that is something not for communication sake but to just make someone mad. Not a fan of that technique in communicating ideas or debating.
In northern Canada and American Indian reservations, that might be true. Some places, it's heroin and others, it's meth, paint thinner or glue. (Police, nurses and social workers typically know what's going around.)
From a health perspective, most doctors would probably argue smoking. Philip Morris International is targeting Asian countries where they are as ubiquitous in most realms of life as was soda advertisements to kids in schools.
Alcohol abuse culture is prevalent in military, universities and sales/management.
I think the impact varies with location and social circles, and is hard to qualtitatively measure (apart from lives, hospital visits/bills, lost wages) because it's very qualitative.