I would like to pitch the idea that the obesity epidemic is a symptom of failed city infrastructure. Imagine if riding a bike was a no-friction activity; you walk out your door, you have a bike there and the bike lanes are treated as first-class infra instead of cars. Imagine how much more you would bike in this situation, and how much healthier you and everyone around you would be
You’re trying to find a problem for your solution.
The obesity epidemic actually due to the increased availability of ultra processed foods.
As well as a massive car-centric society. I can’t even walk to Jack in the Box at 10pm to get a shit burger, but I can drive thru with a car. That’s part of the problem.
If you make something easier to do, it’s more likely to be done. This is why gun control is needed, make it harder to get a gun, less gun death; snacks at the checkout means more buying of snacks; driveways and parking lots and drive thrus mean more car use.
This is only tangentially related, but I just wanted to share a random anecdote.
I ordered a mobile pickup order at my local Taco Bell with their app. Since it’s nearby, I walked there and I had selected in store pickup. I walked inside and waited for a few moments. The manager comes out and this interaction happens.
Manager: “Inside was supposed to be closed. Idk who unlocked the door but you have to go through the drive through”
Me: “Oh uhh I already paid for an in store pickup through the app.”
Manager: “You have to go through the drive through.”
Me: “Uhhh…can I walk through the drive through? I walked here.”
The manager looks at me in total disbelief that someone would do that. “You don’t have a car???”
Me: “I mean I just walked here.”
Manager: “Ok hold on I’ll get your order.”
Lol. She looked at me like she had never heard of anyone walking some place to get some food lol. Granted I live literally a 5 minute walk from there which is probably not really the norm.
European countries have access to those same ultra processed foods and yet their consumption and the obesity rates are dramatically lower. I think there are factors beyond simple availability that we should look at fixing.
Once upon a time people worked 9-5 with a commute somewhere under twenty minutes - so somewhere in the realm of nine hours of employment before home tasks like cooking and cleaning started happening. I believe most millennials and under work at least ten and a half hour (and the number of people trying to juggle multiple jobs has gone way up).
The ultra processed and fast foods are generally the default option when you are so fully drained by a sedentary employment and craving chemical joy to deaden the depression of existence. Millennials have eschewed alcohol and tobacco like no other generation and sugar is the only chemical fulfillment they can find so it becomes a spiral of comfort food into physical pain into inability to seek other enjoyment into comfort food.
I’d hesitate to ascribe the obesity epidemic to a single cause due to the exceptions that prove the rule.
Active living may not be the only way to address the obesity epidemic (it’s endemic now, isn’t it?) but it would help. People will be happier and healthier if they can get exercise as part of their day to day activities.
I fully agree with this. Someone else rightly pointed out that access to UPF doesn’t equate consumption. Why are people consuming UPFs? I would argue because of economic hardship (being overworked), lack of prioritizing healthy activities and social encounters, ignorance, misinformation, and habit and/or addiction.
I think eating good foods should be every humans number one priority. “You are what you eat” may be cliche but it’s true. Above all else, I think, people should be making time in their day to eat properly. Not enough people know how to cook using fresh ingredients. I constantly see claims that processed foods are so much cheaper than fresh foods. In my experience, it’s the opposite. I mean, I just made a whole stock pot full of vegetable soup for less than fifteen bucks and it’ll feed me for a week.
To your point, I think it’s true that adding exercise to your daily routine contributes to a more positive mindset. I don’t know if this is universal but when I’m depressed I eat more poorly. When I’m in a good mood, I eat more healthy. This would seem to be backed by biology and our innate need to consume sugars and fats for long term storage.
Or walking. I’ve been to a few US cities, and the common denominator for all of them is that walking anywhere isn’t really an option. Sure, you can’t always walk A to B in most cities, but at least European cities have public transit to cut down on the distance, necessitating only two short walks to and from a transit station.
Observation: Saudi Arabia is heading down a Houstonian path. There was one pedestrian bridge near me, and outside of that one, getting anywhere involved strategic jaywalking to cross freeways. At least they seem to have a decent bus network, though.
I’ve lived on the east coast, west coast and in Europe. Out here in the west coast (Vancouver) the cities are nice enough but anytime I leave my home I have to walk down a hill (and my partner struggles with that due to arthritis), walk along half a mile of four lane arterial roadway, squeeze through two blocks along the same roadway on an extremely narrow unprotected at grade sidewalk while semis barrel by leaning over my head… then I get to a shopping center and transit nexus and can go elsewhere.
While living in Southern Spain I’d walk two blocks on quiet pedestrian streets to a waterfront promenade which was littered with restaurants and provided a wide (like 20 meter) surface to stroll along to reach the city center - at one point before the city center you’d need to cross a two lane high traffic road but that road had protected crosswalks every 150 meters.
The contrast between these two places (and don’t even get me started on how pleasant Barcelona is to pedestrians) is stark.
I really prefer walking to cycling. I’m totally fine with bike infrastructure, but I’d really just like neighbourhoods to have amenities they can walk to.
Disabilities’ rights. If we grow old, we’re gonna be dealing with some type of disability one way or an other. Sometimes it happens earlier. Plus, helping disabled people can sometimes also help non disabled people by making their lives easier.
A lot of problems, such as homelessness and increase in illness is caused by disability. People not being able to work anymore, or even work not being able to accomodate their needs cause homelessness. Covid basically making a lot of people immuncompromised, yet no work is being done to encourage people wearing masks by the government or other influencial entities.
The USA’s two-party system is a fucking farce and we’re not going to see major, widespread change under either party. But if I bring this up I get called a “Russian bot” and accused of telling people not to vote… even though I vote.
STAR and RCV is growing among some states and counties. Have hope.
That the 105 male/100 female birth to young adult ratio needs a fix to get to 100/100 at least.
The distraction comes from me being not too kind to either of the duo-culture of the US empire on this issue.
I thought female birth ratio was higher than males
No, slightly more AMABs get born than AFABs. Over time the difference cancels out, as AMABs tend to die a bit more sooner.
By itself this is not that big of an issue. A much bigger issue is the gender imbalance that you find in certain localities due to local governments, universities and companies not taking this gender imbalance into account. But I’m glad that you brought up this issue.
I don’t appreciate pronouns being as wide spread in a working environment. For people who have had to fight for their gender identity I will of course respect that choice - but gender is a rather irrelevant quality in the workplace and I feel like the wide proliferation of pronouns on profiles in Slack/Teams/etc… improperly emphasizes the importance of gender in the workplace. I’d much rather use they/them as blanket pronouns and try and demphasize gender in our language. There are numerous more important factors of people’s personalities that are more interesting than gender like interests (imagine if there was a common pronoun for someone interested in D&D as example) and I’d rather use those factors for identity than gender.
I admit this is likely to be fairly controversial but I do think the world would be a much more pleasant place if gender wasn’t constantly reinforced in language.
Typically it is frowned upon to call a woman sir. Doesn’t sharing your pronouns prevent that from happening, ma’am?
Is this a real issue in your opinion?
Yes, it is to me. English (and most languages tbh) has constructs that constantly reinforce a concept of binary genders and highlight that as an important factor.
When you learned about Mr., Miss, and Mrs. did you find that awkward? To know how to title a woman (absent the more modern Ms.) you’d need to know their marital status - but for dudes it’s whatever? That fucking pissed me off as a kid - how are you supposed to know if someone is married when writing them and who fucking cares…
To me, at least, gendered pronouns are the same way - I’m writing to a person, about a thing, as them as an individual. Gender is generally irrelevant to this interaction so why the fuck is it necessary for it.
Imagine if it was astrology sign instead: I just finished writing up a response to OsrsNeedsF2P. I hope Virgo appreciates the care I put into it because I enjoy the question Virgo asked.
Imagine needing to know someone’s birth sign to talk about them and imagine that English constantly reinforced that birth sign was the way to identify others and that there were twelve and only twelve proper birth signs.
Gender expression is an important part of our identities - I have a complex expression as a non-conforming man - but it’s not the important part of our identity. It’s a factor of our identity and, I’d argue, only really rarely a top five factor. People are philosophers, crafters, writers, artists, hikers, gamers, cooks, painters, etc… those activities we enjoy are much more core to most of our identities. Our gender expression is important but should usually only impact a very narrow portion of our identity.
So to me, yea, it’s a real issue.
You will be called “the new hire” until I eventually learn what your name is in a year or two.
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Ah, as someone who doesn’t hide differences do you walk into the office like…
“Hey Nigerian Dan, did you get the memo from Polish John about half-irish half-welsh Sarah’s presentation later today?”
In no way am I trying to erase people’s identities, I just want to highlight that language places an immense emphasis on gender that erases non-binary people and cements it psychologically as an important trait for social interaction.
People are fucking complex, there’s no reason to constantly bucket them into groups by gender identity.
