alt Hacker NewsWe have good food, but you won't find it on "The Easy Path."
The Easy Path is that gentle encouragement to hit up Chipotle for lunch, because it's "right there."
The Easy Path says dinner's hard and you've had a long day, so get something simple, like take-out or microwave.
The Easy Path is entropy. The Easy Path is self-care over struggle. The Easy Path is simple carbs shown on prominent display in store shelves. The Easy Path is advertising.
Hitting the gym isn't on The Easy Path, but forgetting to cancel your gym membership is.
These days, big food companies love "The Easy Path" because it's so easy to commoditize, it's the "Path that Americans are Expected to Take." For financial stewards, being on The Easy Path turns lack of willpower into your ally.
On the other hand, getting good food in the US requires passing the marshmallow test: you have to meal prep, or you have to shop around the sides, or you have to get something on the salad menu. You have to say no to advertising. You have to expend willpower, the most limited of resources to the average American. You have to Go Hungry or Suffer, or have An Upset Stomach. You frequently have to spend more money or time.
Semaglutides are not currently on The Easy Path. Maybe they will be someday. I personally doubt that, because putting GLP-1 on The Easy Path would require big food companies to rethink their entire portfolio.
But you're not wrong in that they could be Easy Path-ajdacent. The dialectic would shift: food companies would shift around to be Organic and Nutritious and Less Calories and find other ways to stay on The Easy Path. Sugar and fat's addictiveness is highly Easy Path-enabling, and that's a pretty big vacuum to fill.
Replies
I think you're making this sound harder than it is.
If you count calories and stick to a budget, you will lose weight, even if those calories come from deep-fried fast food. Sure, it's good to eat more whole fruits and vegetables, and you should, but weight loss doesn't require some kind of Edenic perfection. Stick to a calorie budget and you will lose weight, the end.
We can add some second and third order provisos, sure. The next tip would be to go low carb. And to keep a spreadsheet with calorie numbers for everything you eat. Track what you're doing.
But basically, if you eat 1500 kcal/day for nine months, you will be much thinner. We don't have to make it harder than that. It works. Perfection is not required.
>The Easy Path says dinner's hard and you've had a long day, so get something simple, like take-out or microwave. The Easy Path is entropy. The Easy Path is self-care over struggle.
If you see this sort of food as "self-care" then that's where the war has been lost.
>or you have to shop around the sides
Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person in the world who enjoys this. Discovering, for example, the versatility and cost-effectiveness of skim milk powder was a real game changer for me. Similarly for dried legumes and fruits.
The Easy Path is a meal service like Factor that delivers healthy food directly to your door step.
The Easy Path is signing up for a fitness class on a regular schedule and baking it into your morning routine.
The Easy Path is not buying extra snacks - just don't have them laying around the house for you to eat when you're bored.
The Easy Path is the path of least resistance. However, you have some agency over the environment you create for yourself, so that path of least resistance is to some degree under your control.
Get ground beef in the supermarket, it’s cheap and takes 7 minutes to cook. If that’s all you eat you can’t be fat and out of shape. You also won’t be hungry.
At some point blaming society isn’t going to cut it.
> I personally doubt that, because putting GLP-1 on The Easy Path would require big food companies to rethink their entire portfolio.
I think the drug industry is more powerful than the food industry, these days.