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Given that obesity is sorta culture war related and in the news a lot, I figured this story would be relevant: Weight-Loss Stocks Soar After Obesity-Drug Study Spurs Investor Frenzy
I am more convinced than ever that these drugs are not only the future of wright loss, but similar to Paxil, is also going to a part of culture too and another tool or crutch to mitigate the downsides of modernity, except instead of social anxiety , it's too much food. We're sorta collectively inflicted this on ourselves, as victims of our own success. The pendulum if progress has swung so far towards abundance that we need modern technology just to try to undo it.
I think ultimately, even with the drugs, there’s just no getting around the need for better choices.
In part, I think this is an aesthetic horror for me. We aren’t becoming more emotionally resilient by deadening our emotions, nor are we going to solve our food issues by artificially turning down our hunger thermostat.
Is the hunger thermostat of the average American in 2023 really the natural order of things? The obesity epidemic only began in the 1970s and has been increasing in prevalence and severity. Not just in the States, either, but around the world. I don't know why it is, but I haven't read any compelling arguments that it's really due to a massive global loss of character since a century ago.
Suppose it's one of the "contaminants in the environment" theories (all of concrete ones having serious flaws, I know). If so, our hunger thermostat is artificially turned up; although it's less than ideal to counteract it by introducing drugs to artificially turn it down, it's still far better to have that than to be fat. It means more attractive, healthier people who weigh down the medical system less.
I’ll agree that food companies making hyper pallet able foods is a major part of it, but I also think we’ve created a kind of “snacking culture” that really didn’t exist prior to the 1970s. People are almost constantly bombarded with opportunities to eat, with snack foods literally everywhere you go in public, including gyms. And eating between meals is, at least around me, fairly normalized, and you’ll see people in the office or in the break room eating and drinking and stashing snacks in their desks. Food portion sizes have also grown tremendously since then (this started with restaurants but it’s entered the home as well [https://www.yourweightmatters.org/portion-sizes-changed-time/]) to the point that our calorie intake is nearly 125% of what was typical in 1970. Add up nearly constant snacking that’s been more or less normalized, a sedentary lifestyle (most people work desk jobs, rather than more active factory, retail, or skilled labor jobs) and fewer sports leagues for kids and adults who aren’t good enough to play select teams. Surprise, eating 25% more while moving less causes obesity.
Other than the hyper-palatable foods and portion sizes, I don’t think our food has changed as much as people are saying. We’ve had Oreos within $0.50 of their current price for decades, and their recipe hasn’t changed much. What’s changed most of all, at least from what I can see is the normalization of snacking all the time, the normalization of eating an amount of food that would have embarrassed your grandfather, and the loss of social physical activities as a way to meet friends. It’s culture, a culture obviously shaped by marketing, but culture.
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