This is a serious question; one I hope does not get shut down or blocked. Let me start from the beginning.
Gov’t schools feed children pizza or hamburgers every day because “they won’t eat vegetables,” so it’s “cheaper” because otherwise healthy food will “go to waste.” This is their argument anyway. Gov’t schools are also full of vending machines that sell soft drinks, chips, and other unhealthy snacks.
Many or most employment today are gov’t jobs that completely subsidize employees’ healthcare and rarely ever lay anyone off. Private sector jobs are required by law to provide healthcare to their full-time employees and it is illegal to fire someone for being overweight. There are almost no financial consequences to unhealthy lifestyles or eating habits as all the costs for medication and doctors for obesity related illness is passed on to insurance companies, medicare, or medicaid.
Now my question is this, would this situation be the same in a completely anarchic world? Would there be as much of a problem with obesity in this country or at all? If this was a much smaller problem or nonexistent in an anarchic world, would it be as tolerated as it is today? Or would it be more difficult to find a job if someone is overweight?
While I do not condone mandatory “camps” to send people to lose weight, I do believe many more voluntary alternatives would be available in a free market than are available today.
I appreciate the Mises community’s thoughts and again, I hope the mods keep an open mind as to let this issue be explored more in civil discussion.
I believe the government also subsidizes obesity by subsidizing corn, which a) results in high-fructose corn syrup in just about everything and b) makes fast food cheaper because they use corn as a major ingredient.
I thought government schools were all part of the “eat right” health kick that government has been promoting so much recently.
That said, anything that can create things that are very cheap and convenient with the efficiency that capitalism can create things it is bound to have some unhealthy consequences for the irresponsible, one of those things may be obesity.
I agree. HFCS is also used in all soft drinks and mostly all candy. I guess that’s also why those snacks are so cheap. Those foods and drinks definately multiply the problem.
I’m long out of grade school fortunately, but from what I know they still have vending machines and serve the same food.
I think a highly regulated food service industry today is a part of the problem. To comply with all these silly regulations they have to use the cheapest ingredients like HFCS or hydrogenated oils (trans fats) that increase their foods shelf life instead of higher quality ingredients.
I dont know about most schools, but when I went to HS we wernt allowed to use the vending machines during the day(makes me wonder why they were there at all).
Also dont forget that the government directly subsadizes corn farmers, and places protective tarrifs on sugar, which together has led to the all-pervasiveness of artifical corn based sweeteners, include that most indidously evil ‘high fructose corn syrup’. A truly free society(including one with REAL free trade laws) would probably use more natural sugar(imported from Brazil and the Carribian), which some studies suggest are much healthier than artifical corn sweeteners.
Also, something else to consider: when you actually begin looking at the oft-cited studies on the issue, the alleged connection between obesity and the health problems it allegedly causes is questionable. For one nobody has yet been able to explain the causal factor between the two: ie. nobody can answer the question: WHY does obesity cause diabeties, heart disease, etc? Furthermore, while extremely obese people(300 pounds and up) do show an increased chance of health problems, moderately overweight, and even slightly obese people show dont show any significantly greater risk than ‘normal’ people for health problems(and ‘underweight’ people are the most likely to have serious health issues).
If you ask me the whole obesity ‘scare’ has less to do with concerns for people’s health, and more with the ‘elite’'s(academics and governments) asthetic preferences, they dont like looking at ‘overweight’ people, so they do everything they can to marginalize them…
Well sugar in general thins the blood and creates higher glucose levels, which leads to excess energy (fat) and abnormal insulin levels (diabetes). So there is a connection between excess sugar consumption and weight gain and other health problems.
As far as moderatly overweight or obese people I’m sure their unhealthy habits have the same effects on their blood sugar as well as their cholesterol. I do not think it has anything to do with elites’ ‘disgust’ or something like that. It’s just science and medicine and is of fact.
Well sugar in general thins the blood and creates higher glucose levels, which leads to excess energy (fat) and abnormal insulin levels (diabetes). So there is a connection between excess sugar consumption and weight gain and other health problems.at
Well for starters, that doesnt prove that obesity causes diabetes, but rather that excessive sugar intake causes both diabetes and obesity. So trying to get people to lose weight wont help unless they decrease their sugar intake. In fact, ones weight is determined to a large extent by genetics. Most people will gain and lose weight within a particular range, but wont gain or lose significantly. There are exceptions, such as people with eating disorders, but those ‘exceptions’ are extreme cases.
The best way to live healthy isnt to try and get your weight in between two most-arbitrary numbers(and the BMI numbers really are arbitrary), but rather to simply follow a little common sense advice: eat a balanced diet with lots of meat and veggies, avoid processed grains and sugars, and excercise regularly.
Yes, BMI can be arbitrary. Body fat percentage is a better representation of a healthy weight range, being 6-15% for men and 9-18% for women. These percentages can be achieved regardless of genetics.
While obesity per say might not cause diebetes, most if not all obese people consume excess amounts of sugar or other high glucose foods (such as those containing high amounts of bleached and enriched flour) that lead to high blood sugar levels (diabetes) and weight gain.
Indeed, one of course does have gross control over the caloric input into one’s body. However, one’s genetic makeup will certainly (not that you denied this) have strong influence over how one’s body metabolizes the ingested compounds.
Rubbish. You can only gain weight by taking in more calories than you use. You still have 100% control over whether you gain at all.
While thats the ‘conventional wisdom’ its also not true. Gary Taubes has written extensively on the subject but I’ll sumarize his arguments here:
-Attempts to gain/lose weight by diet and/or excersise are futile, since you body will automaticly adjust its caloric usage to compensate IE if you excersize more, you will be hungrier, and if you manage to stick to the diet, your cells will adjust their caloric usage to compensate. If you eat less, your cells will slow down their caloric usage(the reverse is also true). This isnt to say excercise doesnt offer benefits, but weight loss isnt one of them.
-to a large extent a person’s average weight is determined by the ammount of fat cells in their body, which is determined by genetics.
-weight gain/loss is caused mainly by the growth/shrinkage of fat cells. Fat cells grow by absorbing sources of caloric energy(fat, protiens, and carbs), fat cells most easily absorb carbs, with others being used by the rest of the body, so a low carb diet will help a person lose weight. However fat cells will absorb other forms of energy, so a person can only lose so much weight, unless they eat nothing/almost-nothing, ie they develop an eating disorder.
Here is a great video where he discusses some of these ideas. He’s also written a book called ‘Good Calories, Bad Calories’ where he explains what people should and shouldnt be eating.
I’ve heard all of this bunk before. Being hungrier does not change the fact that you control calorie intake. This is just a typical attempt at shifting responsibility for health from fat people to evil Big Food. I have never known one obese person with a balanced diet. I have known plenty of people who stopped being obese by changing that.
Taubes conclusion that hunger is a simple function of cellular demand is junk. Just about everything affects hunger. One of those things is exercise. But, opposite to what he claims, it decreases hunger. If he ever exercised his own flabby ass he would know that.
I’m not trying to ‘blame’ anybody. As I said most of it is related to genetics. Although you can lose some weight by cutting back on carbs and especially processed grains/sugars.
I personally do know people who are overweight or even obese and live otherwise reletively healthy lifestyles. They excersise regularly, watch what they eat etc. One of my ex girlfriends was considered slightly obese, and tried for three years to lose weight, with almost no success(I think she lost a total of about 4 pounds). She eventually tried a low carb diet, lost 12 pounds in 4 months, was still ‘overweight’ but was unable to lose more. Otherwise she was perfectly healthy.
I still think it best to ignore weight, and focus on good healthy action(avoid processed grains/sugars, excersize regularly, limit drinking and smoking etc)
I know lots of people that have “tried” to lose weight. Meaning they eat x bags of candy instead of y bags of candy per day. I don’t care how fat people are. I just can’t stand the BS. They say they are gonna do something and then there’s a perpetual train of excuses. They jog for 10 minutes… then “reward” themselves with a chocolate bar. You find a bag of candy. It was for someone else. I’ll start caring about what biochemists have to say when fat people start getting serious. Until then, fat people are fat because they choose to be.