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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   38429 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 27, 2023

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That’a certainly one of the drawbacks, but it’s also worth considering this in both historical and global contexts.

From historical perspective, Americans have been driving a lot for many decades now, but obesity rates have only shot through the roof relatively recently. This means that other factors contributing to obesity might have much bigger impact than driving.

Second, it is worth observing that European countries, which allegedly are more walkable, and where people drive less, are rather quickly catching up to obesity rates of Americans. The upward trend is clear and is not looking like it is plateauing in most countries. See eg. Germany or UK.

The fat people I know might very well walk to the store but prefer to drive. You only need to get fat once, for whatever reason, and walking suddenly becomes unfeasible. And there are many reasons for which people become fat regardless of whether their neighborhood is walkable. What's more, I suspect that the kinds of people who get fat are the kinds of people who would not want to walk in the first place.

Linking walkability to obesity is largely nonsense, in my opinion. I can't give you a definite cause for why obesity has become more prevalent, but it has little to do with sidewalks and distance to possible walking targets.

What explains Europe? Is it the food? It can't be smoking or leaded gasoline that was keeping the obesity down over there (unless they regulated those things later than us).

This is not Europe, this is everywhere. As for explanation, I like how Charles Murray's wife has put it:

We decide exactly what we're hungry for and make it for dinner, every day, from a far longer list of favorites than people had 60 years ago. The perfect way to generate weight gain. And we are not alone.

Even if you refrain from eating snacks or sweets (and these also have been extremely optimized for palatability, with many different local maximums to choose from), we are no longer constrained by difficulty of obtaining ingredients, or cost for normal breakfast/lunch/dinner sort of food. Everything is available close by (or can be ordered online), and everything is very cheap relative to our incomes.

...That does make sense. We're more globalized, and we're also the opposite of starving, in general.

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