We would still have to explain the downsides of obesity, and not just in the long-term health effects like heart disease or diabetes risks, but in the everyday life of having to carry around so much extra weight.
Despite that, I’d still agree that being overweight is better than being underweight.
You don’t actually have to do any adjustments to the downsides, for beneficial statistical stories to be true. One point I was getting at, specifically, is that it is better than being dead or suffering in specific alternative ways, also. There can be real and clear downsides to carrying around significant amounts of weight, especially depending what that weight is, and still have that be present in the data in the first place because of good reasons.
I’ll invoke the ‘plane that comes back riddled in bullet holes, so you’re trying to armor where the bullet holes are’ meme. The plane that came back still came back; it armored the worst places, and now its other struggles are visible. It’s not a negative trend, that we have more planes with damage now, than we did when they didn’t come back.
I do think it’s relevant that the U.S. once struggled with nutritional deficiencies with corn, answered with enriched and fortified products that helped address those, and likely still retains some of the root issues (that our food indeed isn’t as nutritious as it should be, outside those enrichments). That the Great Depression happened at all; and the Dust Bowl. There’s questions here not just of personal health, but of history; and when I look at some of the counterfactuals, given available resources, I see general trade-offs that can’t be ignored when looking at—specifically—the statistics.
Sure, I broadly agree, and I do prefer that people are living longer, even obese, than they would be with severe and long-term malnutrition. I think what you’re saying here is “the modern Western diet provides a benefit in that it turns what would have been fatalities by malnutrition into survival with obesity”, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Basically, it is good—very good, one of the greatest human accomplishments—that we have been able to roll back so much suffering from starvation and malnutrition. I think, though, that we can address obesity while also avoiding a return to the days of malnutrition.
Or, in other words, there are three tiers, each better than the last:
Planes get shot down and pilots die
Planes get riddled with bullets but return safely
Planes don’t get damaged and pilots can complete mission
Yes, but also that there might not actually be a specific new thing, a detrimental thing, to gesture at.
If root causes of obesity existed all along, and changes in the modern Western diet revealed the potential for obesity in our region rather than actively causing it, looking for root causes specifically in things that have changed may not work out if the things that have changed are not the root causes.
(I.e., it’s a seemingly useful constraint on looking at the solution space, that might not be true—and not so useful a constraint if it isn’t.)
Ah, I think I see where you’re pointing at. You’re afraid we might be falling prey to the streetlamp effect, thinking that some quality specifically about Western diets is causing obesity, and restricting our thoughts if we accept that as true. I agree, and it’s pretty terrifying how little we know and how much conflicting data there is out there about the causes of obesity.
It might very well be that the true cause is outside of the Western diet and has little to do with it, and I could definitely see that being true given how much we’ve spent and how little we’ve gotten for research taking the Western diet connection for granted.
We would still have to explain the downsides of obesity, and not just in the long-term health effects like heart disease or diabetes risks, but in the everyday life of having to carry around so much extra weight.
Despite that, I’d still agree that being overweight is better than being underweight.
You don’t actually have to do any adjustments to the downsides, for beneficial statistical stories to be true. One point I was getting at, specifically, is that it is better than being dead or suffering in specific alternative ways, also. There can be real and clear downsides to carrying around significant amounts of weight, especially depending what that weight is, and still have that be present in the data in the first place because of good reasons.
I’ll invoke the ‘plane that comes back riddled in bullet holes, so you’re trying to armor where the bullet holes are’ meme. The plane that came back still came back; it armored the worst places, and now its other struggles are visible. It’s not a negative trend, that we have more planes with damage now, than we did when they didn’t come back.
I do think it’s relevant that the U.S. once struggled with nutritional deficiencies with corn, answered with enriched and fortified products that helped address those, and likely still retains some of the root issues (that our food indeed isn’t as nutritious as it should be, outside those enrichments). That the Great Depression happened at all; and the Dust Bowl. There’s questions here not just of personal health, but of history; and when I look at some of the counterfactuals, given available resources, I see general trade-offs that can’t be ignored when looking at—specifically—the statistics.
Sure, I broadly agree, and I do prefer that people are living longer, even obese, than they would be with severe and long-term malnutrition. I think what you’re saying here is “the modern Western diet provides a benefit in that it turns what would have been fatalities by malnutrition into survival with obesity”, but please correct me if I’m wrong.
Basically, it is good—very good, one of the greatest human accomplishments—that we have been able to roll back so much suffering from starvation and malnutrition. I think, though, that we can address obesity while also avoiding a return to the days of malnutrition.
Or, in other words, there are three tiers, each better than the last:
Planes get shot down and pilots die
Planes get riddled with bullets but return safely
Planes don’t get damaged and pilots can complete mission
Yes, but also that there might not actually be a specific new thing, a detrimental thing, to gesture at.
If root causes of obesity existed all along, and changes in the modern Western diet revealed the potential for obesity in our region rather than actively causing it, looking for root causes specifically in things that have changed may not work out if the things that have changed are not the root causes.
(I.e., it’s a seemingly useful constraint on looking at the solution space, that might not be true—and not so useful a constraint if it isn’t.)
Ah, I think I see where you’re pointing at. You’re afraid we might be falling prey to the streetlamp effect, thinking that some quality specifically about Western diets is causing obesity, and restricting our thoughts if we accept that as true. I agree, and it’s pretty terrifying how little we know and how much conflicting data there is out there about the causes of obesity.
It might very well be that the true cause is outside of the Western diet and has little to do with it, and I could definitely see that being true given how much we’ve spent and how little we’ve gotten for research taking the Western diet connection for granted.