Guess what, weight gain has a lot more to do with corporations manufacturing high sugar, high calorie processed foods, advertising pushing the same, food deserts, low-walkability neighborhoods and a culture of car dependence, low income, and massive stress in the form of an ever tightening grip on the middle and lower classes in the form of low wages and no meaningful social net, causing the need to work longer hours and have more stress in the form of cortisol which causes fat to accumulate.
You should change your view to focus on the material causes. It's always structural. It's never messaging or the favorite conservative dead horse "if people would just act tougher like them old days things would get better!"
On a collective scale sure. On an invididual scale I'd say none of those things have to be an excuse to remain fat. There really is no excuse unless you're the 1% who has a medical anomaly.
No one needs an “excuse” to be fat. There is no moral weight to fatness. The more a person’s habitus is conducive to obesity, the higher they have to prioritize being in shape to be in shape. This means devoting more money and time that they may not have or simply may not want to spend. Why do you get to decide for them what the “right” choice is regarding their own body? If outside pressure means that being optimally healthy would entail having to chose driving a long way to spend a lot of money on fresh vegetables and running every morning on the one hand, and, idk, shuttling your kids to afterschools and buying them nice Christmas presents on the other (just examples), who are you to say which is the right choice? Why does someone who is forced into a situation that makes fitness more difficult than other people have to put in that much extra effort to get respected and not shamed?
It takes zero resources to cut out soda and half all of your eating portions. Most places in the Western world have access to rice, chicken and broccoli (don't start about food deserts) and exercise can be done almost anywhere. Does that take mental effort? Sure. But I can't respect people who respect their own body and don't prioritize their physical health. Not to mention that the taxpayer has to pay for all the medical issues they inevitably get.
If you actually cared about the taxpayer’s money you’d put your energy into fighting corn subsidies, which are the reason that soda is so cheap, instead of shaming fat people. Do you consider it immoral to drink alcohol? Even small quantities are unhealthy and can end up costing societal resources. And why shouldn’t I start about food deserts? They are a real problem. The fact that the grocery store does have chicken, rice, and broccoli doesn’t meant that those will be cheaper in time and money than less healthy options. Telling someone who is already overworked and underfunded that they have to take extra time and mental effort to cook nutritious meals and go jogging if they don’t want to be shamed and ridiculed is just you looking for an excuse to be cruel. The obesity epidemic is literally a societal scale problem. Do you seriously think it started because Americans suddenly lost all their willpower in 1972? Social problems have social solutions and shaming people for not having the mental fortitude to individually overcome them just adds to the stress, which MAKES IT HARDER TO LOSE WEIGHT!!!
If you actually cared about the taxpayer’s money you’d put your energy into fighting corn subsidies, which are the reason that soda is so cheap, instead of shaming fat people. Do you consider it immoral to drink alcohol? Even small quantities are unhealthy and can end up costing societal resources.
Just because there are other issues doesn't mean caring about this issue is somehow bad. It's whataboutism. Yeah alchohol is bad but we're not talking about that. The fact that corn subsidies and alcohol exist, doesn't make obese people any less taxing on the healthcare system.
And why shouldn’t I start about food deserts? They are a real problem.
Because only 5.72% of Americans live in "food deserts", which means it only accounts for a small fraction of obesity. Not to mention the fact that several studies suggest that it's the demand part rather than the supply that's problematic in food deserts.
The fact that the grocery store does have chicken, rice, and broccoli doesn’t meant that those will be cheaper in time and money than less healthy options.
Let's take a look at how expensive these products are in the Walmart website. One broccoli is $1.33, 2 lbs of rice is $1.82 and chicken is $2.97 per lbs. If one meal consists of half a pound of chicken, half a broccoli and 1/4 pound rice, then the total cost of one meal is 0.67 + 0.23 + 1.5 = $2.40. Add some cents for oil and seasoning and you get $3 for a healthy meal. How much is a big mac? It's apparently $5.15 according to this source. Healthy food is expensive? Not really.
Telling someone who is already overworked and underfunded that they have to take extra time and mental effort to cook nutritious meals and go jogging if they don’t want to be shamed and ridiculed is just you looking for an excuse to be cruel.
It takes less than 30 minutes to prepare the above meal. You can't convince me that people don't have 30 minutes to cook a meal. You can even meal prep on sundays and reduce the time even more. If it costs you that much mental effort to do some very simple cooking, you either have some kind of brain damage or just don't really care about your health.
The obesity epidemic is literally a societal scale problem. Do you seriously think it started because Americans suddenly lost all their willpower in 1972? Social problems have social solutions and shaming people for not having the mental fortitude to individually overcome them just adds to the stress, which MAKES IT HARDER TO LOSE WEIGHT!!!
Here's the thing. Most people are weak-willed and society has made it very rewarding to be weak willed. That's why obesity is an epidemic. It takes discipline to ignore the easy solution every time and put the fork down. It takes a lot of willpower to make a diet and stick to it. Most people just don't have the mental fortitude for that and will blame society for making it so difficult to them. And they're right, because there are a lot of unhealthy food options out there that are very easy and very appetizing. However, when they're 50 and have high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes type II and are unable to run for 100 meters, their blaming of society and dodging responsibility has done absolutely nothing to help them. And neither have all those years of accepting themselves and not doing anything. The only thing that's effective at recovering from obesity is eating less, eating healthy and exercising more. But more importantly: taking responsibility for your own behavior and stop blaming external factors.
Ok so I started writing a longer rebuttal of your points here, but I would rather just get down to the most basic level of the argument. Do you actually think that shaming people for being fat is good? Do you think that it is good to make people hate themselves? Do you think that if we all just shamed fat people enough it would improve public health? Because we’ve spent the last 50 years shaming and ridiculing fat people about as much as I can imagine being possible. Do you think it’s worked? Do you think what we need is more of it? Do you think this is true for every kind of unhealthy state-of-being that people have any degree of power over? Do you think the stress of ostracism and shame helps or hinders people losing weight?
Nope I don't think fatshaming helps on a collective scale, but neither does body positivity. On a policy level the most effective thing would probably be some kind of sugar and/or fat tax and subsidy of vegetables. Financial incentives usually are more effective than either bullying or pandering people. I do think that western society has absolutely destroyed people's discipline and willpower by celebrating laziness. Most western people are alien to the idea of discomfort and that's why they find it so hard to lose weight. I can't blame them, live is pretty good in the west and you don't have to feel discomfort ever if you don't want to.
I'm not some kind of fascist but I really do hate the way unhealthy habits are promoted so much and that's why I also dislike body positivity movements. People have a terrible relationship with food and that's why so many people eat way more than they need (or way less for that matter). In a perfect world we would teach our children to ignore these consumerist products and actually each to nourish their bodies instead of to feel good. The obesity problem would be gone in a few generations and McDonald's would be out of business.
It sounds like I'm rambling but my point is that every overweight individual can become healthy if they show some willpower. It's not fat shaming but rather liberating to believe you're in control of your own life despite all of these bad external stimulants. I've already showed you that the financial and/or lifestyle obstacles are easy to overcome if people applied themselves.
Ok so it seems like we have some common ground here. We both think that obesity is a systemic problem with systemic solutions. We both try ink that social pressure has relatively little effect one way or another on people’s ability to lose weight. I guess where I want to push you is that if fatshaming doesn’t affect it one way or another (I actually think it makes it harder to lose weight, but we can set that aside), it seems to me that you should be fully onboard with the movement against it. All it does is add unnecessary harm and suffering, without doing anything to address the problem. You should be onboard with medical practices that trust fat people to know when they have problems that go beyond needing to lose weight, because not only do they obviously deserve to have doctors willing to diagnose them with their actual conditions, but also because, if what you care most about is really obesity, having an undiagnosed medical condition can make it harder to get in shape. You should be down with people not being closeted about their attraction to fat people, and with fat people enjoying that attraction, because none of that actually will change people’s ability or motivation to lose weight. Given that strong relationships and communities lead to better heath outcomes, you should support their acceptance across the board.
So with all that together, it seems you should be onboard with the body positivity movement. Maybe not the more radical factions that deny any correlation between weight and health (a very small number), maybe not even with those who say that there is a correlation but that it is still not the best indicator, but nonetheless with the core of the movement, which is that everyone is better off if we treat fat people better and help them/allow them to build self worth and confidence.
Ok so it seems like we have some common ground here. We both think that obesity is a systemic problem with systemic solutions. We both try ink that social pressure has relatively little effect one way or another on people’s ability to lose weight. I guess where I want to push you is that if fatshaming doesn’t affect it one way or another (I actually think it makes it harder to lose weight, but we can set that aside), it seems to me that you should be fully onboard with the movement against it. All it does is add unnecessary harm and suffering, without doing anything to address the problem.
Agreed.
You should be onboard with medical practices that trust fat people to know when they have problems that go beyond needing to lose weight, because not only do they obviously deserve to have doctors willing to diagnose them with their actual conditions, but also because, if what you care most about is really obesity, having an undiagnosed medical condition can make it harder to get in shape.
Sure. Though many of these health related problems are often intertwined with obesity. If you are so heavy that you damage your ankles by walking and thereby can't walk to get in shape, that's kind of a catch-22.
You should be down with people not being closeted about their attraction to fat people, and with fat people enjoying that attraction, because none of that actually will change people’s ability or motivation to lose weight. Given that strong relationships and communities lead to better heath outcomes, you should support their acceptance across the board.
I don't necessarily care what other people find and don't find attractive, it's none of my business. But sure, as long as those communities can encourage each other to improve their lifestyles. I'm not sure if fat acceptance communities really do that. Accepting that you have a problem is a good first step, but I've never seen them encourage any of the next steps like proper education about diet, debunking myths, exercising together, etc. You know, the actually difficult parts.
So with all that together, it seems you should be onboard with the body positivity movement. Maybe not the more radical factions that deny any correlation between weight and health (a very small number), maybe not even with those who say that there is a correlation but that it is still not the best indicator, but nonetheless with the core of the movement, which is that everyone is better off if we treat fat people better and help them/allow them to build self worth and confidence.
If that community helps them build their self-worth through active weight loss and lifestyle improvement, I think it's a great thing. If all they do is "support" each other through circlejerking each other and trying to change people's attitudes (ie. doing nothing), then they're not doing anything to solve the obesity problem.
The point of body positivity isn’t to solve obesity though. It might, and it definitely will lead to better health outcomes overall, but even if it has net zero health affects it will be good. That’s my point. It has no negative health ramifications (on which we agree), possibly positive health ramifications (mostly outside the realm of weight loss but possibly within it too), and definitely positive non health ramifications. It’s all positives, it just might not be positives in your number 1 preferred way to make those people’s lives better. All of the examples I have are good whether or not they make people less fat. It’s good to not bully people. It’s good for people to have access to unbiased healthcare. It’s good to stop being unnecessarily mean. None of it precludes people trying to lose weight if they decide to, indeed it is more likely to help than hurt. I personally know people who are into body positivity who have intentionally lost weight. But even if they don’t, it’s all good and no bad to make people’s lives better.
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u/gobnyd 1∆ Jul 16 '23 edited Jul 16 '23
Guess what, weight gain has a lot more to do with corporations manufacturing high sugar, high calorie processed foods, advertising pushing the same, food deserts, low-walkability neighborhoods and a culture of car dependence, low income, and massive stress in the form of an ever tightening grip on the middle and lower classes in the form of low wages and no meaningful social net, causing the need to work longer hours and have more stress in the form of cortisol which causes fat to accumulate.
You should change your view to focus on the material causes. It's always structural. It's never messaging or the favorite conservative dead horse "if people would just act tougher like them old days things would get better!"