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Notes -
Uh, yes? (This feels like such an obvious answer that it feels like a trick question.)
Chinese workers have gained 35 pounds since 1983, if you check out the latest statistics. So yes, western affluence has made them fatter. As for the British, I attribute it to the general decline of cultural shaming and the rise in quality and the low price of convenience food.
But we're getting off topic.
A lot of this seems to be the lose weight/maintenance mindsets, which I do not deny does not exist, but the rule is fundamentally the same. "Must I perpetually maintain my consumption below my output, for the rest of my life?" Yes! It sucks!
But just because it's hard doesn't change the fact that fundamentally, weight gain is happening because they're eating too much relative to basal metabolism + activity. Set point theory is the kind of just-so theorizing that people laugh at evo psych for doing. It smacks of what FA activists call 'intuitive eating', ascribing all of the agency to one's body instead of willful volition. But the body can be terribly stupid. For an addict, it is almost a surety. Even if a set point did exist, it should be - in every case - overridden by what the brain knows to be a healthy and safe weight.
The human body should not be a democratic institution.
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