Posts by BenWilson
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Stink, so I have to vote again? Then again, I can probably vote NORML without worrying about the remote chance that my one vote could put National in power.
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Kyle
Which I'll again point out wasn't at all what you said in the first place, which was along the lines of "recession would be good because people might eat less and that would be good for them (because they'd be less fat).
If they're eating too much then I stand by that point. If you want to see it as standing against your point, then I put it to you that your point is not what you think it is.
You will also note, if you read further on, that I have already explained that I was kidding about the recession causing that. I really don't think food shortages of any kind are going to happen at all. There's just too much food. I was simply responding to the alarmist claim that it might happen by looking on the bright side. People who think that we shouldn't have a cycleway because some people might starve - that's the stupid context in which I was making my joke. No one is going to starve. We should be so lucky.
I do think a decent recession can bring about large shifts in thinking processes, though, and that might help with the 'obesity problem'. We live in a culture of consumption, and people losing some of that consumptive power are sure to find that it's a long, long way from the end of the world.
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But... no one here has ever argued that.
I'll let that one slide. Since it was all I said, right from the start, and you flamed me, I got the impression that you were disagreeing. But perhaps you were disagreeing with a position that is not mine. I think that's highly likely. Also perfectly understandable. You thought I was ripping on fatties. I was not. Sorry if I gave that impression.
Does not compute.
It does compute. Perfectly. A system like the human body can be as inefficient as hell. But it can only be so efficient. So it's perfectly possible to poo out everything you eat without absorbing one single calorie. That would be an extremely unfortunate problem to have. But it is not possible to eat less calories than your are burning, and maintain weight. It simply is not. I don't make any claims about how many calories that is, because there is a massive range of efficiency (clearly it's unbounded at the inefficient end), different for every person. But there is a break-even point. Always. Any less than that, and you lose weight. That does not mean if you go over it you gain weight, because the excess could simply be dumped.
(Also, it's not as if I disagree with your main point about healthy food and exercise. But, you know, *no one* disagrees with that point. It's a no-brainer.)
Excellent. Curiously, there does seem to be a massive industry around diet and exercise, which is utterly failing to deliver that message to a lot of people. So I'm not so sure it's quite the no-brainer you think. You even seem to be struggling with the converse case, and how that could possibly tally with this no-brainer of a message.
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Danielle, the third law of thermodynamics doesn't say that a system can't bleed more energy than it takes in, no matter how much energy that is. It's only about the impossibility of it gaining energy without any being put in.
For sure, some people burn energy faster than others, or perhaps don't even absorb it. Like you say, lucky them. At least lucky them, when there's a lot of food to eat. When there isn't, it could be highly disadvantageous to be like that.
I really don't know if there might be some people who could actually eat basically anything at all, in enormous quantities, all the richest things, and still lose weight. I can't see any reason for that to be impossible. What's impossible is the converse (you got it right), that you can eat nothing at all, and yet still maintain weight (and continue to live and move).
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Sofie, glad to see you found a way. As you say, it's healthier and it costs less.
Kyle, I thoroughly understand that you can make it a lot more complicated than that. For sure, that makes for a better argument than the straw man position that medical science has discovered a way for humans to survive on sunshine and fresh air alone, so long as they have obesity genes. You really just have to lose the assumption that people can control what they put in their mouth, and then yes, the problem of obesity becomes very difficult and tricky and will require endless research and discussion before we can come to full and informed opinion on how it is that science can control that for us. But even when that's all done and told, and the amazing research breakthroughs come back, guess what the course of treatment will be (aside from the drugs and the gene therapy and the hypnotherapy, and group counseling, and endless dietary training, and amazing new exercise discoveries)? It's still going to be that we should "eat a balanced diet in appropriate quantities, and exercise".
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"Dog-whistle" is a dog-whistle. And that's not just the Correspondence Theory of Truth. It's also noting that "Dog-whistle" is a reflexive concept. Which has nothing to do with Pavlov.
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Ben, treating obesity (metabolic syndrome) is just not that simple. And as both Danielle and I have tried to tell you, you can eat a fairly small amount of food and still have quite a bit of adipose tissue. You can actually be quite slim and have quite a lot of adipose tissue. Size is not the issue.
And so it goes, all the medical diagnoses that all fail to explain how people are beating the 3rd law of thermodynamics, and creating stored energy (fat) out of nothing.
I'm not trying to 'treat obesity'. I'm just saying what, at the most basic level, is causing it.
If it were as simple as a matter of "will power" or "eating less" then that would solve everything and there would be a lot less illness in the world.
Yup. But you want to make it an illness, and deny that humans can have willpower and eat better and less. Which is totally and utterly, patently false. It can be done.
There are quite possibly some people who can't do it. But there are also people who can. I know this for an absolutely stark fact because it happened to me, personally. I don't need to hear reams of evidence telling me that when I was fat I had some kind of funky mental illness, any more than people who sink piss need to hear it, or anyone who does anything that anyone else disapproves of, for that matter. Sometimes human beings exercise choices. The only question is: Will they?
After all of the analysis you can do, after every way in which you can deny all these people any say in what goes into their own mouth, I can bet you for absolutely certain what you have done, if you actually succeed in ever 'helping' any fat people. It will have been cutting the intake through the standard orifice for the ingestion of food, and perhaps also improving the nature of it, and adding some exercise into the routine. The course of treatment can be written in one sentence. It will be identical to what it has always been. The only question will be how it was that you managed to get them to do that. You will no doubt see it as something you did to them, rather than something they did for themselves. That seems to be where you and I differ.
I'm sure it's much harder for some people. Obviously so. The desire to eat outweighs the desire to not be fat. Why this is the case is most likely very different for each person. I don't attach any moral judgment to it whatsoever. If people seriously aren't bitter on being fat, then that's great for them, they get to enjoy eating whatever they like. I don't care, like I say, I have great friends in exactly this situation. What I do care about is the part where I have to hear that they're bitter on being fat, and someone needs to help them, but not by advising that they change their diet and doing a bit more exercise. That's just trying to have your cake, and eat it too, and then blame it on someone else.
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High school science taught me that fat doesn't come from eating food, and isn't that simple at all.
Fat is stored energy. Which comes from eating food.
I think I lost you right there.
"Eat less food" goes against every instinct for most people.
Yup, fat people particularly.
Which is why solutions to an "obesity problem" require more than finger-wagging at people who somehow fail to exercise willpower.
Yes, that would be far too easy.
Society doesn't have an obesity problem, it has a "heavily-marketed cheap crap food for people taught to sell their time in return for unnecessary goods and services" problem.
I think it's more of a "Too many people like eating too much shit" problem. You can externalize it to society if you like. I personally don't, and that has helped me.
I've shot my bolt on this thread. If you guys want to continue having a long and convoluted discussion, digging up whatever the state of the art in dieting science is, go for it. Personally, I see a thriving industry that utterly fails to deliver, and have no time for it. Some problems do have simple solutions for everyone who is willing to take them, and everyone else is fucked and that's all there is to it.
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So let's borrow 40 billion! Cycleways for all, or should that be for all the children to pay back :(
Heh, for once they might actually be paying for something that they actually used.
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but I'm concerned that it'll suck funding out of local councils' budgets for encouraging day-to-day cycling.
I'm more concerned that it will suck out of the national psyche on cycling. But then the national psyche on cycling sucks already. People would rather drop their kids off at school in an SUV than dare to let them develop a little independence.
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