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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   29463 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 7, 2023

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People in thin places like Japan, Ethiopia, or the 1970s don't need to exercise self-control to stay thin. They just stay thin naturally.

On the other hand, we have a word for people who need to constantly employ self-control to try to lose weight. We call them fat people.

The solution is not for people to employ heroic amounts of self control. Instead the solution is for the natural environment to be reshaped such that self-control is not necessary. Sadly, there are no practical suggestions for how to do this on a large scale. We're not going to turn the U.S. into Japan. Also, we don't truly understand the root causes of the obesity epidemic.

I also think the suggestions for people to "just eat less" are equally bad. If you tell someone to do something 1000 times and they never do it, the advice isn't bad necessarily, but its certainly not effective.

I don't have any great suggestions for the interventions that will work. I just know that the ones which have been repeated ad nauseum for the last 30 years definitely don't work. It's time to try something different.

Semalglutide and its successors seem the most likely to actually make a difference.

People in thin places like Japan, Ethiopia, or the 1970s don't need to exercise self-control to stay thin. They just stay thin naturally.

People in Ethiopia don't need self control because they have external control; they can't get enough food. I don't know that people in Japan don't exercise self-control.

On the other hand, we have a word for people who need to constantly employ self-control to try to lose weight. We call them fat people

Those who employ self-control to not gain weight we call "people of normal weight".

The solution is not for people to employ heroic amounts of self control.

It doesn't take "heroic amounts". Mostly it means strict attention to avoiding self-delusion, which is perhaps one place where fat-shaming helps. If every time a fat person complained they weren't eating much but still gaining weight, they were told that maybe they should put down the snack they're eating while they're complaining, it might have an effect. But that's considered rude.

Hmm.

  1. Make things like McDonald's, junk food, etc. low-status. Like smoking cigarettes.

  2. Stop subsidizing HFCS and other junkfood. Start subsidizing healthier options.

  3. A bit harsher - different tax rates, potentially different jail sentences and traffic fines, etc for heavy people.

  4. Morbidly obese people also are expected to be celibate: it's considered disgusting for them to present themselves as anything other than more or less asexual, and it's transgressive and considered in extremely poor taste for them to be in relationships.

  5. Intensive shaming. Weight loss of the Hock. If you're morbidly obese you are expected to train and have yourself dumped into the Alaskan wilderness in late winter with no rescue beacon. If you don't make it out, you're too fat to be a good citizen; if you survive, you're presumably leaner and fitter after having spent a couple weeks in absolutely frigid conditions hauling your gear through the Alaskan wilderness. If you're still big? You get dumped again and again 'till you're either fit or dead. This is...strictly voluntary, but you're seen as cowardly and dishonorable for not doing it.

Mostly it means strict attention to avoiding self-delusion, which is perhaps one place where fat-shaming helps. If every time a fat person complained they weren't eating much but still gaining weight, they were told that maybe they should put down the snack they're eating while they're complaining, it might have an effect.

It might be mostly an American phenomenon. All fat people I know(and there are many of them with 20% obesity rate and majority of population overweight) are honest about their eating habits and often make related self-deprecating jokes. And of course they relentlessly try many different things to lose weight from brand new diets, to calorie counting, to all kinds of exercising and it doesn't help because they can't maintain them.

Sadly, there are no practical suggestions for how to do this on a large scale.

For start, make walking in USA towns and cities possible and stop designing any new urban spaces primarily for cars.

When I see a comment like this, my instinct is to ask "How?" We just traded a personal-level problem for a politics-level solution, which means it will happen approximately never. Not only is the morass of US politics highly illogical, it is supported by a whole ecosystem of bad decisions and incentives which work against change, from zoning laws which benefit existing suburban homeowners to subsidized housing requirements which force new developments to be low-status places to live.

I guess the personal solution is to just buy a home for yourself in a nice urban space. Not only can you become part of a community which walks everywhere, but your neighbors will share your values (Hopefully), and if land values go up, other landlords will be motivated to make more places like your urban space.

Except, again they have the same food environment we do. They have restaurants, including fast food. They have convenience stores full of processed junk, just like we do. The difference between them and us is not the food, it’s food culture. They have much stronger taboos against overeating and being fat. People there have no problem shaming people for eating more than they should, they have no problem pointing out when a close friend or relative gains weight.

Except, again they have the same food environment we do.

Not really. I'll skip HFCS, which is both over-discussed and probably not a key driver of the blubber gap, and point out that America is the only country where bread is routinely sweetened. Notoriously among VAT geeks, Subway is legally candy in Ireland because there is so much added sugar in the bread.

Seriously, the amount of added sugar in mass-market bread in the most European countries (I am only directly familiar with the UK, Ireland and France) is zero. If you want sweet bread, you spread honey on it.

In my experience, all the diets which actually work for large numbers of people involve severely restricting refined sugar (including fruit juice) and somewhat restricting sugar in whole fruit. That is a lot harder if staples like bread have hidden sugar in.

So, in your opinion, the change in obesity in the US and Europe since the 1970s has been due to different shaming norms?

Well, changes in food culture in general, but shaming is a part of that. People used to eat much smaller portions, and they’d discourage snacking between meals “don’t spoil your dinner” was a normal admonishment in the 1970s and 1980s. Kids weren’t allowed to drink soda very often. My family only really had desserts around when we had visitors of some sort. And kids were encouraged to be active and play outdoors and so on. Parents did get concerned when their kids got fat (keep in mind, this was 1980s fat, not obese). It wasn’t explicitly shaming as in “drop the burger fatty” yelled at strangers, but people did see it as weird when someone was having huge servings of something.

That, and the American anti-smoking campaign

TheMotte seems hard hereditarian when talking about intelligence and social status but, somehow, it becomes a blank statist, just lift bro, "cultural factors" social scientist when it comes to obesity

American weights have blown up in the last century. So we can't blame DNA on this one.

TheMotte seems hard hereditarian when talking about intelligence and social status but, somehow, it becomes a blank statist, just lift bro, "cultural factors" social scientist when it comes to obesity, dating and physical appearance.

Heredity provides a ceiling on intelligence. And on musculature (at least without serious drugs) -- some people can indeed lift and not build much muscle. I haven't seen anyone say "cultural factors" about physical appearance beyond that which is (obviously) affected by diet and exercise; nobody's claiming height or nose shape is cultural. Except in some very unusual cases, the floor heredity puts on healthy weight is well below what people call "fat". Does heredity affect propensity to gain weight? You bet. But it doesn't make you fat.

It is quite striking, isn't it! The same person here will literally attribute intelligence and personality, assimilation, etc almost entirely to genetics, then turn around and say attractiveness and weight is a character flaw. It's fascinating.

Yes, it is quite striking that a (probably largely) wrong claim is pointed out as wrong and a (probably largely) correct claim is pointed out as correct. And people around here can simultaneously believe that one claim is true but an unrelated claim is false.

There have been IQ heritability studies. It's a lot more than 50% heritable. Understanding that's gated by childhood nutrition, parasite load, etc; people around here throwing around IQ heritability assertions are largely correct.

There are others in this thread who are claiming that negative outcomes in children of single parents are primarily due to genetics.

In other words, genetics can tell you to leave your partner but not how much to eat.

These kinds of claims require evidence.

One can be born with ugly features, or a short adult height or otherwise unpleasing proportions. Weight isn't like that. No amount of genetics will make you 300 pounds without putting the requisite calories into your system.

Personality, on the other hand, whether genetic or not is one of the most immutable things there is. The so-called personality disorders are pretty much intractable. About the only thing that changes personality is brain damage and the various extreme measures called "brainwashing" (usually involving drugs, torture, or both)

Where do you think the desire to eat comes from? The aether? It comes from your experience of the discomfort of hunger, and the feeling of reward from eating, created in the brain, exactly the same as intellect, neuroticism, conscientiousness, violence, etc.

Personality, on the other hand, whether genetic or not is one of the most immutable things there is

I strongly disagree here. People can and do change. There's a whole psychological literature on how environmental effects actually increase contribution towards personality towards middle age:

The contribution of genetic effects to phenotypic stability is moderate in magnitude and relatively constant with age, in part because of small-to-moderate decreases in the heritability of personality over child development that offset increases in genetic stability. In contrast, the contribution of environmental effects to phenotypic stability increases from near zero in early childhood to moderate in adulthood. The life-span trend of increasing phenotypic stability, therefore, predominantly results from environmental mechanisms.

Throwing around loaded and categorical statements like 'the most immutable thing there is' without any evidence to back it up is poor praxis my friend.

What if the US just tried harder? In wartime, if fighting hasn't worked, then surrender, flight or negotiation are alternative options. But you can also fight harder to achieve victory.

I refuse to accept that the US has made a serious effort to fight obesity. European and American versions of food are wildly different in their ingredients, even the unhealthy stuff is markedly more full of weird chemicals:https://foodbabe.com/food-in-america-compared-to-the-u-k-why-is-it-so-different/

I know that everything is technically a chemical but there should not be petroleum products in food, not even as preservatives. That's not something we were supposed to consume. Reduce the processed chemical slop, return to food that comes from fields, seas and pasture.

We're not going to turn the U.S. into Japan.

Well, when Japan faced serious problems with their society, they tried consciously and intensively to turn itself into a blend of the UK, Germany and America. They copied the strengths of other nations and became stronger for it, while the rest of Asia was left behind. But they could've said, 'oh we're not going to turn Japan into Germany', done nothing and gotten colonized. Learning from other countries and copying what they do well is a useful and beneficial tactic. Refusing to learn is not a recipe for success.

Good points as long as "try harder" isn't just try the same stuff that's failed over and over again but the Max Power way.

I said I didn't have any ideas, but interventions targeted at youth seem like they have the greatest chance of success. People who are fat at age 18 tend to be fat for life. We could have more P.E. classes and actually flunk the nerds and fat kids who fail to meet standards instead of giving everyone who shows up an A.

If we're allowed to consider pharmaceutical inventions, then Metformin and Semalglutide should be free.

I think it would be good to teach young people how to cook for themselves. It's a basic, important skill. Economical too.

I mean, if Semaglutide works then great. It just seems like a really inelegant solution. What are the other consequences of eating highly processed food? Is processed food or additives making people mentally ill? Reducing sperm counts? There are other modern plagues aside from obesity. Even examining pictures of our grandfathers reveals significant differences in phenotype. There are faces that you just don't see anymore.

I think a big chunk of this multifaceted problem stems from things that people ingest, whether that's hormones, food additives, drugs or microplastics. Better to change diets than to introduce new sources of complexities via gastric bypass or drugs. Once we have a complete understanding of the body and biology generally, then we should be more aggressive. Given that our understanding is limited, we should try to reduce complexity of inputs (or use tried and tested inputs), reduce unnecessary medical interventions. Healthcare already gobbles up too much of our wealth as it is, with limited returns on quality of life.

As someone who doesn’t cook, it’s because it takes ages to get a worse-tasting product than what I can buy, it’s messy and I have to clean up afterwards. Frankly, I have better things to do with my time. It would be an ask even if I had a big kitchen and a short commute but otherwise it’s just not on.

Perhaps I’m overextending but I think that before 1950 cooking was done by housewives, employers or landladies. After the 80s it was mostly takeaways and microwaveable meals. The era when a majority of employed people cooked for themselves was almost infinitesimally short.

As someone who does cook:

  • I don't bother if I am on my own. It isn't worth it.
  • It isn't difficult to get to the point where you like your own cooking better than cheap restaurant food or ready meals.
  • It gets really awkward when your family know that you can cook better food (or at least food that they like more, because you adjust the recipe to taste) than cheap restaurants, because it means you can't go out to get a break.
  • I can only combine cooking daily with a full-time job because I mostly WFH. Pre-pandemic, there were 2-3 cheat days a week - mostly pasta with packet sauce.

What is common among housewives, employers or landladies is that when they cook, they do so for multiple people, often for a large number of them. I'd say that is the crucial difference. (Not that I find your observations incorrect.) In terms of scale, cooking for multiple people makes obvious sense. Cooking meals of one for yourself doesn't. For one, it requires that you keep a meticulously calculated amount of perishable ingredients at home, and you re-stock it frequently. It's just a pain in the butt itself.

I think it would be good to teach young people how to cook for themselves. It's a basic, important skill. Economical too.

I thought that's what home ec classes were supposed to cover.

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