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Diet pill, eat what you want
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@brisadeldesierto If your argument is about use of resources, then surely should also be arguing for people to have sedentary lives so we don't need so much energy or food - don't go to the gym, don't work out - because these activities chew up resources.
Far biggest waste of resources is industry producing extra food for subsidies that are not needed, combined with destroying any food that are not deemed to look good enough (e.g. bananas that aren't the preferred size or shape). Doesn't matter how much we individuals minimise our own waste and carbon footprints when industry contributes many times waste more without care. (Sure; we do what we can in our own lives, but it is false to heap responsibility on the shoulders of ordinary individuals when corporations, industries, and governments have a far bigger impact than we ever could.)
It's a strawman argument to claim we shouldn't help obese people with (hypothetical) medication because they should simply stop using extra resources.
It is a flawed belief to assume that obesity is all about overeating and waste of resources. Medication can lead to weight gain, health conditions can lead to weight gain, some studies have shown that weight loss can lead to lowered resting metabolic rate even when people eat well and exercise (e.g. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2016/11/27/why-so-many-people-regain-weight-after-dieting) which means they put on weight while eating less food than others, stress, hormones, sleep, etc can all affect weight without drawing on any extra resources.
'Morality' - to leave a person untreated because you want to teach them a lesson? Righto.
To be honest I think the mass "education" is part of the reason we have these problems. I was taught in school that breads and cereals are what you can eat heaps of - 6-8 serves a day - yet what I have realised as an adult is that this actually makes me gain weight. When you look at the impact of industry lobbyists on public health policy and 'education', you have to realise it is not an unbiased source of information. Half the health fads have been created by the health sector pushing one idea or another before there is conclusive evidence (e.g. remember for a time that eggs were bad because they are high in cholesterol? But then a couple decades later they realised that cholesterol in your diet is not the same as blood cholesterol, and that removing cholesterol from the diet can actually increase blood cholesterol? Or when they told pregnant women to avoid allergens like peanuts so their foetus wouldn't develop allergies... then after there was a spike in babies born with allergies they realised that it's better for pregnant women to eat a wide variety of foods including peanuts to minimise allergies... total reversals in health advice).
Honestly, I don't think there is any health or diet advice that is applicable to everyone. We each have to discover what works for us, and half of what mucks us around is listening to generic advice that might work for 60% of the population but not necessarily for us specifically. (If something works for 90% of the population, but you are one of the 10% it doesn't work for...).
The problem is not just at an individual level, the stats show it is something happening in our society - driven by many complex factors. Our society is more 'educated' than at any point in history, yet we struggle with some of the basics of life. We have more obesity, more depression, more suicidality, more auto-immune diseases, more allergies, more man-made illnesses, etc. I'm not saying a weight loss pill is the solution, but the "eat less, move more" message that has been repeated adnauseum for decades clearly isn't working for 1/3rd of the population either.
In the country I live in, medications are regulated. They aren't handed out willy-nilly. Any such medication would only be provided to those who need it, under medical supervision, and would no doubt also be provided alongside health information about eating and exercise as doctors already do. Just because a medical treatment exists (e.g liposuction) doesn't mean everyone uses it, or that people will intentionally overindulge to capitalise on it.
The benefit of science is to research lots of things, better understand how things work, and hopefully find solutions. Research is being done in many fields; researching solutions regarding weightloss (which affects about 1/3rd of the western adult population) doesn't mean they aren't also researching other important things too.13 -
@Lucciicul I never said that "we shouldn't help obese people with (hypothetical) medication because they should simply stop using extra resources". That's completely taking my point out of context. What I said was there are better approaches as to how to help them, both that are better for the environment and probably for themselves (I insist that it seems to me that a person taking this drug will become dependent on it, since the core issue is still not treated).
And yes, industries and so on have more impact that one individual can do. But with that reasoning, and talking about carbon foot print here, most countries have no impact on climate change either. Four countries produce more than 50% of the emissions of all the world. China, United States, India and Russia. And if we count Japan and the EU in, thats 70%. So emissions could be controlled by reducing what these countries produce, and what the rest of the ~160 countries do don't matter. So I guess they should be doing whatever they want, because in the end it's all about what the developed countries do. Right?
This sort of mentality is (in part) of what I was referring to when I said there's a moral issue with this drug. Not by any means that a person should be left "untreated because I want to teach them a lesson". But, again, there are today other ways to treat/help a person overweight. Yes, there are medical conditions that make a person gain more weight than the average, but I haven't seen a single study showing the case of a person with any of these conditions that couldn't lose weight without the professional help that is already out there. Same with the adaptive thermogenesis issue. Even if there is one for all or some people, there are here and other forums countless of evidence of people losing their weight and maintaining for many the years. Did they have to consume less than the TDEE calculators say? Maybe. But they are still doing it without any pills.
I would keep answering but I'm already late for work.5 -
Aaron_K123 wrote: »So assuming it works it is a pill that encourages people to waste food. Yeah....awesome. How about instead of becoming pathological about food consumption as a society we work instead towards viewing food as fuel and a limited resource because that is what it is.
I mean seriously..yeah, let's all overproduced food in developed wealthy nations and lower agricultural resources by depleting soils just so we can pop a pill and crap it all out without actually getting any value from having consumed it. Meanwhile in undeveloped nations people continue to suffer from malnutrition. That sounds like some sort of description of one if the levels of hell from Dante's inferno not something to strive to accomplish.
I'm not sure it is so black and white. People that are obese are already "wasting" food in a sense. They also have a higher risk of negative health issues, so economically speaking, even if they ate the same but stopped being obese, these people would reduce their strain on global resources. Granted, this assumes there is some level at which not doing a heart a bypass in America can be economically exchanged for growing 5 more ears of corn in a starving country. Though the food wastage argument already does assume not growing 5 ears of food in America or other developed country can be exchanged for 5 ears grown elsewhere, so I think it is fairer than it seems.
It does seem that ideally a diet pill would kill appetite, not just at a base physiological level but at a hedonic level, rather than just causing calories to bypass digestion. Still, I'd rather not have the perfect be the enemy of the good.2 -
It is a flawed belief to assume that obesity is all about overeating and waste of resources. Medication can lead to weight gain, health conditions can lead to weight gain, some studies have shown that weight loss can lead to lowered resting metabolic rate even when people eat well and exercise (e.g. https://www.sbs.com.au/food/article/2016/11/27/why-so-many-people-regain-weight-after-dieting) which means they put on weight while eating less food than others, stress, hormones, sleep, etc can all affect weight without drawing on any extra resources.
Some medications cause weight gain via water retention, weight gain from a medication lowering metabolism is rare, and there are a number of medications that alter appetite. Beyond the water retention ones, the other medications still involve overeating - taking in more calories than maintain the current body fat levels - though of course one should be sympathetic that the person has a harder time.To be honest I think the mass "education" is part of the reason we have these problems. I was taught in school that breads and cereals are what you can eat heaps of - 6-8 serves a day - yet what I have realised as an adult is that this actually makes me gain weight. When you look at the impact of industry lobbyists on public health policy and 'education', you have to realise it is not an unbiased source of information. Half the health fads have been created by the health sector pushing one idea or another before there is conclusive evidence (e.g. remember for a time that eggs were bad because they are high in cholesterol? But then a couple decades later they realised that cholesterol in your diet is not the same as blood cholesterol, and that removing cholesterol from the diet can actually increase blood cholesterol? Or when they told pregnant women to avoid allergens like peanuts so their foetus wouldn't develop allergies... then after there was a spike in babies born with allergies they realised that it's better for pregnant women to eat a wide variety of foods including peanuts to minimise allergies... total reversals in health advice).
Honestly, I don't think there is any health or diet advice that is applicable to everyone. We each have to discover what works for us, and half of what mucks us around is listening to generic advice that might work for 60% of the population but not necessarily for us specifically. (If something works for 90% of the population, but you are one of the 10% it doesn't work for...).
The problem is not just at an individual level, the stats show it is something happening in our society - driven by many complex factors. Our society is more 'educated' than at any point in history, yet we struggle with some of the basics of life. We have more obesity, more depression, more suicidality, more auto-immune diseases, more allergies, more man-made illnesses, etc. I'm not saying a weight loss pill is the solution, but the "eat less, move more" message that has been repeated adnauseum for decades clearly isn't working for 1/3rd of the population either.
I'm not so sure about the rates of other traits though. It is a bit hard to say what the baseline for human auto-immune disease is, say, when someone has an auto-immune disease that is potentially fatal in society without modern medicine.
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On a proper diet, your body maintains homeostasis. Pills are nonsense.2
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A pill to prevent weight gain? Screwing around with the natural balance in your body is not a good thing. Even if they were successful in creating such a pill, it would likely wreak havoc on the body over time.
The irony is that if someone was ever successful in creating such a pill, the company that funded it would become the richest company in the world.
It's sad to know that instead of spending research funds on cures for diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer's, they opt for a weight loss pill....
And equally as sad people would rather overeat and rely on some magic pill to save them instead of eating a reasonable amount of food for their caloric needs and moving a bit.2 -
Imagine this actually worked. IMO, the psychology behind disordered eating would just show up somewhere else as a different disorder...0
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