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But even in the areas where the US restricts advertisement, it isn't banned. You're not going to find any print ads for Absolut in Highlights magazine, but you do find them in maxim.

So I guess it begs the question, "what would you ban it from?" Do we ban processed food ads from any magazine that has a demographic that includes morbidly obese people?

I mean, I don't think banning advertisement or food should happen at all, but If you're proposing it, where do we start?

 whembly wrote:

 kronk wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
A simple solution might well be to ban advertising of all processed foods, as those are where the major problems lie
(fats/sugars etc that people don't know, and don't want to know is there)

advertising reminds people stuff it there and available, above and beyond hunger

less advertising/brand display and people would eat less (and the less you weigh the easier exercise is)

I'm not against it, actually. In theory. I don't know about ALL processed foods. Milk is "processed". You'll need to tighten that up a bit, but I'm willing to listen.

Just look at TV adds for medications when describing side-effects.

Is that what we want?

My favorite is when you have a list of terrifying side effects, and then they don't actually bother to tell you what the medication is supposed to be used for, other than something to do with partially cloudy but still bright skies, healthy verdant fields, and smiling people at a hard to discern, but like 35+ year old age.

The fact that we even ADVERTISE medicine should be nothing less than utterly insane to any rational population.

 SilverMK2 wrote:
People are very slow to change their behaviour. The easiest way to impact on obesity levels is to go after the food manufacturers - limit additives, put into place limits on salts, fats, etc that can be in certain foods, etc...

You then impact significantly on the population with almost no effort, simply by enforcing certain food and health standards on manufacturers.

This, to me, is absurd.

No one is making you buy and eat it.

I should be able to eat whatever the feth I want. But bearing that in mind, it's also on me if I go on a two week bacon and donut bender, gain 30 lbs, and develop diabetes.

I just don't get the lack of accountability/responsibility these days. It really confuses me.

so,

problem:

people ignore the plethora of education, labelling, doctors advice, ect that tells them to eat healthy and excercise.


solution?!?!

dont advertise junk food!


if it were an information problem, then why the heck is advertising unhealthy food "working" when advertising eating healthy food is "not working"


As people have said, its not "easy"(some people think easy means effortless which is why the quotes, to me, eating healthy and excercising is both simple/easy) to be healthy, it requires a small amount of work/planning, which is too much work for a large # of people, so they do not do it.

it cannot be easy/effortless, lifes not easy, lifes not fair, you have to put the effort in or it just wont work.

easy is why people are overwheight in the first place, making things even easier isnt the solution, thats just more of the same thinking that caused the problem in the first place.


smokers pay more on their health premiums for their bad choice, so should obese people who make that choice (not talking about the >1% of obese people who have legit medical conditions)


maybe put pictures of gross fat on junk food like they put gross pictures of cancers on smokes?

but again, if telling people to eat healthy doesnt work already, why do we think more of the same will work?

Disgusting

Then again 90% of my workplace is overweight to obese

 cincydooley wrote:

 SilverMK2 wrote:
People are very slow to change their behaviour. The easiest way to impact on obesity levels is to go after the food manufacturers - limit additives, put into place limits on salts, fats, etc that can be in certain foods, etc...

You then impact significantly on the population with almost no effort, simply by enforcing certain food and health standards on manufacturers.

This, to me, is absurd.

No one is making you buy and eat it.

I should be able to eat whatever the feth I want. But bearing that in mind, it's also on me if I go on a two week bacon and donut bender, gain 30 lbs, and develop diabetes.

I just don't get the lack of accountability/responsibility these days. It really confuses me.

The FDA already restricts what can and cannot go into food products - what is the resistance to a few more controls which are unlikely to impact upon you at all?

There are a few products on sale in the USA which cannot be marketed elsewhere because they contain substances which are banned for human consumption - some of these undergo different manufacturing processes to make them suitable for sale.

 easysauce wrote:


smokers pay more on their health premiums for their bad choice, so should obese people who make that choice (not talking about the >1% of obese people who have legit medical conditions)

In the old days of health insurance, a weight table was used, and if the person was above the "limit" for their height, they simply did not get coverage. Period. NOW, with Obamacare, the standard plans mean they dont pay any more than another person (if they are a nonsmoker) but there are many supplements out there that still use the height/weight chart.

So, in many ways, being TOO fat meant that a person didn't have access to a doctor who would tell them "hey tubby, hit a treadmill and eat less crap, or you'll die"

Personally, I agree that a person who is obese without the underlying medical conditions should pay at the same rate as a smoker, but I've no control of the insurance industry.

Do smokers pay anything extra under the US "health insurance via employer" system or is that just for private coverage? A quick search seems to show that a couple states made the decision not to let insurers charge extra for smoking.

Charging obese extra seems counterproductive, since weight loss (especially the level you are talking about in these cases) can require a lot of supervision to be done safely and with long term success.

But I think the same goes for smokers too. There is a lot of medical help that can be provided, and putting a barrier between smokers and that care (via higher premiums) is counterproductive.

And yes, smokers and obese people both make choices that increase their risk for illness down the line. Even if they don't change anything they do, removing barriers to health care (aka: higher premiums) lets you catch diseases and complications earlier and treat them earlier which results in cost savings in the long run.

A person might eat themselves into Type 2 Diabetes. But you can do yearly physicals and catch them when they are starting to show early insulin resistance and make lifestyle modifications there, or catch them very early in the disease process and start to treat with medications. Or you can catch it years later because they couldn't afford health insurance and now you have the same person with the addition of kidney damage, loss of eyesight, additional heart disease - all caused by untreated diabetes which could have been treated even if the person stayed obese.

A person might smoke themselves into high blood pressure. But you can do yearly physicals and catch them when they are starting to show early elevated blood pressures and make lifestyle modifications there, or catch them very early in the disease process and start to treat with medications. Or you can catch it year later because they couldn't afford health insurance and now you have the same person with the addition of kidney damage, elevated stroke risk, and additional heart disease - all caused by untreated hypertension which could have been treated even if the person kept on smoking.

Sure, you can use financial incentives to reduce either. Tax cigarettes and unhealthy foods more, make advertisements illegal, control additives. Lots of options, although we can always argue if they would be effective.

But putting a barrier between people who make bad choices and the health coverage that can keep costs down in the long run and offers the tools and help to turn your life around? That's just stupid.

 d-usa wrote:
Do smokers pay anything extra under the US "health insurance via employer" system or is that just for private coverage? A quick search seems to show that a couple states made the decision not to let insurers charge extra for smoking.

Charging obese extra seems counterproductive, since weight loss (especially the level you are talking about in these cases) can require a lot of supervision to be done safely and with long term success.

But I think the same goes for smokers too. There is a lot of medical help that can be provided, and putting a barrier between smokers and that care (via higher premiums) is counterproductive.

And yes, smokers and obese people both make choices that increase their risk for illness down the line. Even if they don't change anything they do, removing barriers to health care (aka: higher premiums) lets you catch diseases and complications earlier and treat them earlier which results in cost savings in the long run.

A person might eat themselves into Type 2 Diabetes. But you can do yearly physicals and catch them when they are starting to show early insulin resistance and make lifestyle modifications there, or catch them very early in the disease process and start to treat with medications. Or you can catch it years later because they couldn't afford health insurance and now you have the same person with the addition of kidney damage, loss of eyesight, additional heart disease - all caused by untreated diabetes which could have been treated even if the person stayed obese.

A person might smoke themselves into high blood pressure. But you can do yearly physicals and catch them when they are starting to show early elevated blood pressures and make lifestyle modifications there, or catch them very early in the disease process and start to treat with medications. Or you can catch it year later because they couldn't afford health insurance and now you have the same person with the addition of kidney damage, elevated stroke risk, and additional heart disease - all caused by untreated hypertension which could have been treated even if the person kept on smoking.

Sure, you can use financial incentives to reduce either. Tax cigarettes and unhealthy foods more, make advertisements illegal, control additives. Lots of options, although we can always argue if they would be effective.

But putting a barrier between people who make bad choices and the health coverage that can keep costs down in the long run and offers the tools and help to turn your life around? That's just stupid.

When I was doing Health Insurance, I "specialized" in (read: only dealt with) single paying customers, usually small business owners... not any form of group/business based health insurance, so my knowledge of whether a company that uses BC/BS over another to provide coverage for employees will charge that business/employee more for being a smoker. A few of the companies that represented DID offer work insurance, and I believe that the policy offered through a business, in order to be ACA compliant had to be the same as what was offered to individuals (as in, if I work for John's Logging Company and get HI through "ABC Health Insurance" but then I leave, and go work for Brian's FIshing Company who doesn't offer coverage and I go to the "ABC Health Insurance" website to get my own coverage through them, the policies should be the same, and at the same, or very close in premium). So, in that way, it makes complete sense to me that even getting a large company policy through work, someone is still paying extra for the worker who smokes.

In the fine print, I do believe that many smoking cessation type products can be gotten through your health insurance at a decent discount, with the eventual goal of the person quitting smoking, and after a couple years, that person can qualify for a "non-smoker" policy. In my mind this would necessarily be how any approach to obesity would have to work, from the insurance side of things; Provided they actually treat fat people the way they treat smokers.

 d-usa wrote:
Fosters, Australian for "get that stuff off the continent!"

It's not even made in Australia anymore, for the most part. Most of it comes from South Africa, IIRC.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
less advertising/brand display and people would eat less (and the less you weigh the easier exercise is)

Banning cigarette advertising here in Oz didn't do much to stop people from smoking.

 easysauce wrote:

if it were an information problem, then why the heck is advertising unhealthy food "working" when advertising eating healthy food is "not working"

What is you definition of "...healthy food.."

 easysauce wrote:

smokers pay more on their health premiums for their bad choice, so should obese people who make that choice (not talking about the >1% of obese people who have legit medical conditions)

They already often do.

 easysauce wrote:

maybe put pictures of gross fat on junk food like they put gross pictures of cancers on smokes?

Is that what they do in Canada?

yup we have gross pictures of mouth cancer, various tumours and gross looking teeth on our fags (smokes to you yanks, im a 1 gen immigrant.)

healthy food is well defined already, if people cannot use common sense apporaches like "fruits and vegetables are healthy, candy, potatoe chips and fast food is not" then thankfully there are numerous sources for concrete informations on nutritional guidlines.

its even printed on all food products what the ingrediants are, how much of them you are supposed to eat per day, and how that food fufills them...

again, the information/definitions are ALREADY there, people just ignore them, dont care, or unfortunatly, are too easily confused by something that says along the lines of:


"package size 100g,
serving size 50g,
daily quotient per serving of fat, sodium, sugar 100%"

to figure out that eating this item is 200% of the recomended daily intake of these things.

 easysauce wrote:

healthy food is well defined already...

It really isn't. What might be healthy for someone like me, a person who burns upwards of 5k calories a day, might not be healthy for someone who doesn't do that. As is generally the case, context is important.

I'm not taking the mick out of Americans, but a lot of Americans like guns, a significant portion of those gun owners will be overweight, and lastly, some of them probably smoke as well!

It's a triple whammy of an open carry, overweight, cigar toting average American. Health insurance companies must be going bankrupt at that combination

Ending the obesity crisis would involve either tampering with the human mind to not crave junk food anymore or force overweight people to eat less. Neither of these sound pleasant.

 cincydooley wrote:

 Bullockist wrote:


Heres the list of ingredients for Jif creamy peanut butter:

WTF is "Rapeseed" and why is it in my Peanut Butter?!!!!


Joking, I don't eat peanut butter.

OT: I believe the morbidly obese are a tiny sliver of the population that truly deserve the scorn of society.

I see people in Wal-Mart using those scooter things and just want to cry for humanity. Of course I believe a significant portion of the worlds population need to die off anyway. There is no tragedy in people dying of their own stupidity and laziness. More air for me.

I believe it was George Carlin who said "the morning I wake up and cannot see my di%& I'm sewing my mouth shut."

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:

I believe it was George Carlin who said "the morning I wake up and cannot see my di%& I'm sewing my mouth shut."

That's not really fair as I live in an area that gets fairly cold, especially in the morning!

Have better morning time dreams then!

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:


I see people in Wal-Mart using those scooter things and just want to cry for humanity.

Wait... In American supermarkets, you can ride on scooters?
Where is the nearest emigration office!

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
Of course I believe a significant portion of the worlds population need to die off anyway. There is no tragedy in people dying of their own stupidity and laziness. More air for me.

But that is kinda disturbing...
It sounds almost like a certain failed Austrian painter of whom I can't recall the name at the moment...

I didn't say I was the instrument of their demise. I just mean there's very few world problems that wouldn't be solved by 20% or so of the population not being here.

Yes. There are "I'm too fat to get around this huge store" scooters provided by the big box stores.

To be fair it is a brilliant idea. Many stores rent those things for 20$ and hour

 Iron_Captain wrote:
But that is kinda disturbing...
It sounds almost like a certain failed Austrian painter of whom I can't recall the name at the moment...

That's the funny thing. People always say stuff like "stupid people shouldn't be allowed to breed" and "we'd be better off with much less of the population", but when asked who decides that and on what metric, they can't really come up with an explanation that doesn't make them sound like a monster.

Which is why I'm resigned to the fact that we're all just screwed.

 Bullockist wrote:
sorry sebster, addictions are solely on the individual. Over eating is as much an addiction as heroin or smoking, people over eat to get the overfull chemicals in the noggin or as a result of some other psychological issue. Blaming anyone but the individual whilst being kind, does not and will never help the problem. And yes I have addictions myself.

Take your example of heroin, and think about what we do with a heroin addict. We recognise that yep, the heroin addict got themselves in that situation, but we also understand that while the heroin addict might have gotten themselves in that situation, just leaving them to try and get themselves out will almost certainly fail and end up costing society a stupid amount of money in police resources, damage from crime to feed their habit, jail times and so on. And so we ban heroin to stop people getting in to that situation, and we force people in to rehab programs and all kinds of other stuff.

While obesity doesn't need anything like those drastic measures, the basic logic still remains - regardless of whether the person did it to themselves, it makes sense for society to understand the cost of the issue it faces and do things to minimise that cost, and help people with that problem as it does so.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kronk wrote:
I have filtered this thread with your posts and haven't seen your proposal to fix the problem. Perhaps you posted it in another thread that I missed.

I am against "Fat shaming". Calling people out on it isn't doing anyone any good, unless you can only get an erection when you're mean to people. However, how do we fix it? What is your proposal?

I haven't given a solution. This is an issue that I don't believe I've seen any kind of particularly good solution proposed yet.

There's lots of things being experimented with - an interesting one is simple food labels - just showing healthy food in green, neutral in no colour and unhealthy food in red has a ridiculously good impact on people's food selections at a cafeteria. It hints at a simpler, more emotionally effective labeling system might give better results than the list of number we get on packaging right now.

Increasing subsidies for lap band surgery might even be part of a solution - better to pay for a lap band now than have to renovate a home to handle an obese person in retirement.

There's all sorts of things being looked at and discussed, but for the most part that kind of stuff gets lost in the margins because right now society seems unable to actually see the problem as it really is. It's like climate change in that sense - we need to have discussion about the various forms of clean energy and the role they might play in a future economy and the economic structures we might build to encourage their development... but that discussion never happens because it gets drowned out by people who want to claim global warming is still being scientifically debated.

My point is that once society as a whole finally actually sees a problem as it is, it's amazing how quickly and painlessly we solve it. Most of the problems come in the years (decades) in which get ourselves confused about the issue.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 cincydooley wrote:
I feel like, "you can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink is appropriate here."

I don't think further regulating the food companies, as some people have alluded to, is the solution. I, on occasion, want some horrible for me Doritos or a big, greasy basket of chicken wings. Just Because someone else can't manage their intake shouldn't mean the options should be removed from everyone

I don't think completely removing food items is an option that anyone anywhere is seriously considering. Apart from everyone recognising that you can eat the odd snack food with no ill health, just think of the practical reality of something like ever getting up - right now the food lobby is so powerful that they can effectively pressure health agencies and even WHO to remove sections on food quantity from population health studies... the idea that whole foods could ever get banned is just never going to happen.

To the extent that direct control of food happens, it will be to ban specific ingredients such as trans-fats, where there are healthier alternatives that might cost slightly more but produce the same flavour.

 kronk wrote:

 sebster wrote:
that they should eat better and exercise doesn't fix the problem.

I have filtered this thread with your posts and haven't seen your proposal to fix the problem. Perhaps you posted it in another thread that I missed.

I am against "Fat shaming". Calling people out on it isn't doing anyone any good, unless you can only get an erection when you're mean to people. However, how do we fix it? What is your proposal?

I have a solution. It involves African plains, cheetahs, video cameras, and a laugh track.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
The solution to this problem is very simple, but the issue arises when we conflate "simple" with "easy".

I mean, we all understand what is required for someone to lose weight- they must consume fewer calories than they use, over a long period.

Exercise is also helpful, but mostly for the side benefits and increasing metabolic action overall- the most important point is to reduce calorie intake to less than what your body needs to fuel itself.

What you eat, whether it's all natural or processed, does not have THAT much to do with weight gain or loss. It may be related to other health issues (diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, etc) but weight loss is almost entirely predicated on calorie control.

The thing about that is, being hungry really sucks, it's quite hard to get through daily life while being hungry, and our brains aren't wired to tolerate it in an atmosphere of plenty where the issue can be easily solved.

If this were an easy issue to resolve, obesity wouldn't be such an issue, because let's face it- few people actually want to be overweight.

So it is disrespectful to imply that people are somehow weak for having trouble shifting weight. It is doable, but it takes discipline, and it is not easy at all. Simple, but not easy.

Why do anything? If they want to eat themselves into oblivion thats their call. They will save health care costs via a shorter life so its win win.

 sebster wrote:

There's lots of things being experimented with - an interesting one is simple food labels - just showing healthy food in green, neutral in no colour and unhealthy food in red has a ridiculously good impact on people's food selections at a cafeteria. It hints at a simpler, more emotionally effective labeling system might give better results than the list of number we get on packaging right now.

Increasing subsidies for lap band surgery might even be part of a solution - better to pay for a lap band now than have to renovate a home to handle an obese person in retirement.

1. Labels. Agreed. When I go out to dinner, I would love for EVERY restaurant to have on their menus the fat, calories, and other pertinent info on each menu item. While I can generally make a good decision these days on a somewhat-healthy choice for dinner, "Secret Sauces" can trip you up. "The cheif has prepared a wonderful "blah blah" sauce for your grilled chicken" to me instantly means that a Ribeye would probably have less fat, but I don't think many people realize that.

2. I'm actually ok with that. Hospital and doctor bills for the senior obese is rather expensive, I would think.

 kronk wrote:


1. Labels. Agreed. When I go out to dinner, I would love for EVERY restaurant to have on their menus the fat, calories, and other pertinent info on each menu item. While I can generally make a good decision these days on a somewhat-healthy choice for dinner, "Secret Sauces" can trip you up. "The cheif has prepared a wonderful "blah blah" sauce for your grilled chicken" to me instantly means that a Ribeye would probably have less fat, but I don't think many people realize that.

I agree. Because, although most every restaurant's menu, with nutritional value content is on their website, or A website somewhere, I'd much rather be able to see it right in front of me.... And none of that "Items with this idiotic leafy symbol are all under a certain calorie limit"

I believe chain restaurants are required to have that info available now much like their MSDS book due to allergy reasons.

Obviously this becomes more difficult for mom and pops where they're changing the menu often or cooking fresh.

But then again....cooking fresh.

 sebster wrote:

 Bullockist wrote:
sorry sebster, addictions are solely on the individual. Over eating is as much an addiction as heroin or smoking, people over eat to get the overfull chemicals in the noggin or as a result of some other psychological issue. Blaming anyone but the individual whilst being kind, does not and will never help the problem. And yes I have addictions myself.

Take your example of heroin, and think about what we do with a heroin addict. We recognise that yep, the heroin addict got themselves in that situation, but we also understand that while the heroin addict might have gotten themselves in that situation, just leaving them to try and get themselves out will almost certainly fail and end up costing society a stupid amount of money in police resources, damage from crime to feed their habit, jail times and so on. And so we ban heroin to stop people getting in to that situation, and we force people in to rehab programs and all kinds of other stuff.

While obesity doesn't need anything like those drastic measures, the basic logic still remains - regardless of whether the person did it to themselves, it makes sense for society to understand the cost of the issue it faces and do things to minimise that cost, and help people with that problem as it does so.
.

What I was trying to point out is that the act of blaming food companies takes the onus away from the person to change their behavior. Addictions take a lot of work to overcome and taking personal ownership of the problem (even partially) away from the addict is very counter productive.
If someone else is to blame, how can the individual change their behavior?
No matter how much help you give an addict ( or price inflation as well incidentally) the behavior will remain until they make a personal decision to change behavior. Blaming anyone but yourself is counter productive.

 Bullockist wrote:
What I was trying to point out is that the act of blaming food companies takes the onus away from the person to change their behavior. Addictions take a lot of work to overcome and taking personal ownership of the problem (even partially) away from the addict is very counter productive.
If someone else is to blame, how can the individual change their behavior?

Except that there is not a single person on Earth saying that it is all about the food companies, and therefore we can tell people they shouldn't worry about what they eat because when we have the companies under control they'll only have healthy foods and quantities available to them.

But there is vast number of people who believe that obesity begins and ends with personal choice, and all we should do is blame the fat person and do nothing about food and information in society.