Traveling from a fairly walkable, but still car dependent midwestern city to NYC and also Europe in the last few months, it's amazing how much our living environment contributes. My first day in NYC and Europe I put in about 14k steps and at least according to my phone, one of those days I burned 750 cal just walking around to various places. Just by living my life I was WAY more active.

Making the good choice the easy/only choice is the only way to solve this problem long-term (without drugs)

The amount of food you eat isn't a habit. And I don't know what it is that makes people obese, but I don't think it's simply "bad food" as in the stereotype of bad food.

It seems clear enough to me that there is something - something - in the ecosystem that messes up the body's weight / energy homeostasis and we haven't identified the culprit. It might be a food additive, but it could be something to do with artificial light in the evening or plasticizers in our plastic products or who knows what.

Just my pov as non-overweight person who doesn't exercise (other than flipping my four year old around), doesn't walk or run long distances (but a 5 mile walk every couple of months doesn't phase me), eats very few fruits and vegetables, generally eats mostly meat, pasta, bread, cheese, cream and potatoes, and ends up in a fast food outlet maybe once a week on average.

> They rather make obvious habits effortless.

I wouldn’t call taking the stairs in a pre-elevator world “effortless”, rather it was just the only option.

I also think better food handling/storage/treatment/blah means we absorb & retain more of the calories that we consume.

Agree. "Defaults matter".