alt Hacker NewsBut is it time to give up just because there hasn't been much progress yet? It seems now that we have #2 there's little incentive for #1, whereas there was plenty incentive for #1 before even if little action.
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I think it's better not to sacrifice the wellbeing of our citizens at the feet of an ideology about exactly how we should be solving an obesity crisis.
Besides, having healthier people will lead to better infrastructure for healthier lifestyles, purely based on demand. It's a virtuous cycle.
Yes. Looking out 30, 50, 100 years science will further resolve the obesity problem that has plagued the US since the 1980s. There is no scenario where you radically alter such a gigantic, disconnected, complex culture such as the US has. The old joke was that the US would solve this with pills (so to speak), and that's what is going to happen.
If you have a tiny, homogeneous culture it is still very difficult to radically alter it in the span of a couple decades (think: Sweden, Finland). For something the scale of the US, with the diversity of the US, there is no possibility. Anything suggested as comprehensive would be fantasy. There are only small changes that could be done, eg relating to sugar consumption limits in drinks and food; some would have a meaningful impact, however you still won't fundamentally change the culture's calorie problem.
Getting thinner will do extraordinary things for rebooting the malfunctioning US. Obesity does a lot of harmful things to work ethic, longevity, quality of longevity, productivity, mental capabilities, to say nothing of course diabetes and cancer and so on.
I think fourish decades was enough time to see if we’d get our shit together on the pile of problems that need to be fixed to solve this the #1 way. We haven’t, even a little.
So no, I’m thrilled to see #2 show up to maybe get our healthcare system to limp along for at least a couple decades longer than it was looking like it would.