56
videos
Implausible explanations for the obesity epidemic, such as sedentary lifestyles or lack of self-discipline, serve the needs of the manufacturers and marketers more than the public’s health and the interest in truth.
Like the tobacco industry adding extra nicotine, the food industry employs taste engineers to accomplish a similar goal: maximize the irresistibility of their products.
How the power of the “eat more” food environment can overcome our conscious controls.
We all like to think we make important life decisions like what to eat consciously and rationally, but if that were the case we wouldn’t be in the midst of an obesity epidemic.
The unprecedented rise in the power, scope, and sophistication of food marketing starting around 1980 aligns well with the blastoff slope of the obesity epidemic.
Why are U.S. taxpayers giving billions to support the likes of the sugar and livestock industries?
The rise in the U.S. calorie supply responsible for the obesity epidemic wasn’t just about more food but a different kind of food.
We have an uncanny ability to pick out the subtle distinctions in calorie density of foods, but only within the natural range.
Rather than being some kind of disorder or failure of willpower, weight gain is largely a normal response, by normal people, to an abnormal situation.
The big fat “fat gene” accounts for less than 1% of the differences in size between people.
The common explanations for the cause of the obesity epidemic put forward by the food industry and policymakers, such as inactivity or a lack of willpower, are not only wrong, but actively harmful fallacies.
Are the apparent adverse effects of heavy cannabis use on bone just due to users being skinnier?
