I think I disagree with you on this one. With obesity reaching pandemic levels internationally, I think forcing simple healthy choices is actually a great solution that helps a larger majority than those who may be stigmatized by using the escalator (for what may or may not be a visible reason to choose the escalator). At the very least it increases awareness of those healthy choices.
Still curious what the speech bubble says though…
if obesity is reaching a pandemic level, it is obviously no longer treatable with “why don’t you walk up the stairs for once, fatso?”. if a majority of people are obese it is no longer a question of lifestyle choices.
Exactly. Go to a grocery store and load up on unhealthy shit, then go back to the same store and load up on healthy shit. The price difference is insane, especially when considering shelf life.
I buy frozen vegetables mostly, but I could feed my family a whole lot cheaper on cheap TV dinners.
Now we have (at least in my part of the US) dollar generals popping up in food deserts with the lowest quality shit on the planet. In the neighborhood I grew up in, most people didn’t have cars and the nearest grocery store was 30 miles away. That community is surviving on dollar general groceries now. When I was a kid we bought brown beans and white rice in bulk and lived mostly on that. We drank powdered milk.
When my brother and I refused to eat beans and rice, my mom would color it with food coloring to get us excited. “Who wants BLUE RICE AND BEANS?!” “WE DO! WE DO!”
If we had grown up in the world today, we’d probably be struggling with obesity.
“Go to a grocery store and load up on unhealthy shit, then go back to the same store and load up on healthy shit. The price difference is insane, especially when considering shelf life.”
This intrigues me, and definitely isn’t my experience. Do the same thing in my country and you come out with a comparable amount of food, perhaps influencing the choice element I describe above.
One commentary I’ve come across about American food is that the shitty stuff is intentionally priced so cheaply as to make the good stuff seem insanely priced. My experience above suggests that this might have a grain of truth to it. If willing to share, how do you feel about this commentary (i.e., what do you think of it)?
That’s the thing, obesity isn’t as much of a problem in Korea.
Something is working.
Then we likely disagree on the cause of the obesity pandemic. In my view, obesity is a choice moderated by increasingly inactive lifestyles, high volumes of low quality food, and genetics (obviously not a choice).
Add in contributing factors of affordability, general apathy towards nutrition, ready availability of food, grabbing food for all occasions (stress/joy/boredom), and corporations (esp. major corporations; food engineering for addictiveness and flavour, rampant marketing, and low quality offerings to bolster profits and scale).
So in my view, still largely long-term lifestyle choices, with corporate influence definitely playing a part.
But you seem to think differently, what do you believe I’m not seeing?
you list it all, but i think the things you class as “contributing factors” are more significant, because it would explain the numbers better. i just think that it’s statistically improbable that that many people would choose sedentary life. it doesn’t match with my perception of my surroundings.
a parallel: if some people have better teeth then average, it is probably because they care about their teeth. but if the majority of a community has better teeth than the rest of the country, there’s probably something in the water.
increasingly inactive lifestyle are caused by inaccessible cities, car reliance, and multiple-job wage slavery
no one just up and decides “gee whilikers im going to start having an inactive lifestyle” one day lol
Hard disagree here.
“Forcing simple healthy choices” completely disregards the many and varied causes of obesity.
This type of thinking reminds me of the war on drugs approach to drug abuse.
Quite obviously, the underlying causes of obesity are many and varied. The only way to resolve an “obesity pandemic” is to have more services directed at understanding an individual’s unique circumstances and helping them develop strategies to improve their health.
This sounds expensive, and doesn’t sound like an election-winning policy in 2025, but that’s where we are at.
To be fair, I didn’t propose this approach as an absolute solution to the obesity pandemic. I said I agree with this method. There are obviously contributing factors that I’ve listed elsewhere, but I stand by that - you don’t have to agree with me. It can easily be part of a broader strategy.
If you wanted to solve the obesity pandemic, 100% resolved, absolutely you need systemic change and individualized services. And yes lol it would be a wildly expensive endeavour.
Edit: phrasing
