tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602622501663834998.post7605198820019633962..comments2023-10-23T09:18:59.040-05:00Comments on Empirical Question: Do Reasons Matter?Sallyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15376389949707679077noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602622501663834998.post-86024626165673531692013-03-04T08:32:27.722-06:002013-03-04T08:32:27.722-06:00I totally agree that the government being wrong ab...I totally agree that the government being wrong about some aspect of health (what? no!) is a huge problem here.<br /><br />Tam, I also am not convinced by the "being obese has no health risk" argument, that seems to be a bit of motivated reasoning. It sure would be awesome and convenient if this were true, but the evidence doesn't seem to support it. (Add to the list of inconvenient truths? Or at least inconvenient likely-to-be-truths.) What if the situation is that being very fat is unhealthy but losing weight is practically impossible. OK, sucks to be really fat, but move on. Do people need to focus on avoiding getting really fat to begin with? Is it possible to encourage this in a way that is fat-acceptance compatible? I don't know.Sallyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15376389949707679077noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602622501663834998.post-4255366387954933972013-03-04T01:25:44.599-06:002013-03-04T01:25:44.599-06:00Right. It's absurd.Right. It's absurd. Tamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18079829842465164437noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602622501663834998.post-85726733094640518272013-03-03T19:13:29.656-06:002013-03-03T19:13:29.656-06:00Tam - given how much government tries to block/ban...Tam - given how much government tries to block/ban research involving banned substances, it is likely that, had butter been banned/restricted 20 years ago, the research finding that butter isn't so bad after all never would have been done. (See Marijuana, medical research on)rvmannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3602622501663834998.post-57214172658015373902013-03-03T00:55:39.834-06:002013-03-03T00:55:39.834-06:00Awesome.
I think if we stopped focusing our reso...Awesome.<br /><br />I think if we stopped focusing our resources on obesity and started focusing them on promoting healthy behaviors for everyone regardless of size, it would work out better. <br /><br />The drive to eat is a pretty powerful one. It wouldn't be surprising if evolution provided us with appetites strong enough to overwhelm almost any possible conscious efforts at control. Obesity doesn't seem to have been a common problem in our evolutionary past. When I lost a lot of weight before, I became a person who was continually cold, and this has never gone away. (Related? Maybe.)<br /><br />I'm not a big fan of Gary Taubes, but his analogies to the growth of children are, I think, pretty right on. If a 12-year-old can't conceivably control eating more and getting taller, growing breasts, etc., what is different about adults?<br /><br />Some fat acceptance activists argue that extra weight is harmless, but I think the preponderance of the evidence is on the other side. (I don't think being what is currently called "overweight" is harmful, but being very fat seems to bring higher risks of many health problems.) Nevertheless, since we don't have a working prescription for this problem, and since stress and anxiety about one's size has well-proven adverse effects, I definitely think it would be better to treat this as something neutral and out of one's control, like height or a family history of breast cancer.<br /><br />Maybe if we really saw it as neutral, people who have been able to maintain lower weights with a healthy amount of vigilance would stop, become fatter, and develop more health problems. Believing your weight is out of your control probably makes it harder to control it. So I'm not sure how it would all balance out. But the current social stigma against fatness is pretty deleterious, and I don't like the way that the medical establishment is legitimating anti-fat prejudice with the focus on obesity.<br /><br />It's hard not to judge people for being fat. I have to work against that in myself, despite that I'm fat. (Of course, I'm aware of having unhealthy habits, so it's not as though I see myself as being "naturally" fat despite a healthy and fit lifestyle.) It sucks that if I see a skinny person with a McDonald's bag I just think the person is young and immortal, or having a treat today, or was in a hurry, or whatever, while if I see a very fat person with a McDonald's bag I'm prone to think something like, "That's a shame - he/she should take care of him/herself better." What the hell, Tam.<br /><br />It's sometimes fun to imagine a world in which basically only healthy food is allowed to be sold, or at least in which it's more closely regulated somehow. But even aside from any intrinsic concerns we may feel over the loss of freedom, there are serious problems with this idea.<br /><br />First of all, if the government/medical establishment is wrong about some aspect of health, it becomes impossibly slow to turn the ship around. We now know (at least I think we do) that butter is healthier than margarine, but they've been saying otherwise for decades. It would suck to have to wait for laws to change in such situations, so that we could have butter again.<br /><br />More crucially, I'm not sure how much gang violence/mafia activity/mass incarceration I'm willing to tolerate as a result of the inevitable enormous black market in unhealthy foods. I'm pretty sure I'd be willing to buy black market Pringles myself some days (not to mention real favorites like dark chocolate raisinets). I'd rather not be complicit in the murder of Bolivian teenagers or whatever.<br /><br />I do hope that people continue to be more interested in healthy convenience foods. Making my own food from scratch is something that I really don't enjoy and am not very motivated to do, and I don't think mass-produced pre-made foods must intrinsically be unhealthy. We've seen a lot of movement on this already, and I think there is a lot more to come.Tamhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18079829842465164437noreply@blogger.com