The obesity epidemic is NOT an epidemic.
It is an insanely amazing and fascinating evolutionary SOLUTION that has resulted in a new-age conundrum that only new-age cooperative thinking can potentially get us out of.
Ask someone in a third world country if they want electricity, light, modern transportation, easily accessible cheap delicious calories, and a job that involves no manual labor.
Ahhhhh Duh!!! Sign me up!!!
No human in their right “mind” is going to say NO to those things and evolutionarily they shouldn’t!!! The core complexity of the solution is that we are asking humans to essentially say NO and say NO repeatedly day in and day out to choices that are evolutionary no brainers.
Saying NO is a first world luxury. It involves having the space, the financial security, and the experience and education to even push this decision up to higher brain functioning AKA the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
But, do not expect these prefrontal cortex derived and sustained strategies that work on the individual level to work on the population level.
Simple solutions and simple stories will not dent this “problem”. They only hinder real discussions around complex and wide reaching solutions to a perhaps incomprehensibley complex “problem”.
But…BRO…SUGAR! Sugar is the reason billions of humans are alone, unhappy, unfulfilled, undernourished, overfat, overworked, undermuscled, and pre-diabetic.
That type of thinking needs to die, but it never will because that reductionist means of problem solving will be forever enchanting to human beings. Yet, if you are reading this you have a choice to carry that flag or suffocate it with indifference and silence.
The only feasible answer from a neuroscience standpoint is to start to take away the choices, to begin to make the harder, right thing the only available choice. And billions upon billions of humans are going to fight that tooth and nail because they should. #FREEDOM to smash Coke Floats in the Wave Pool! These types of potential solutions also go against our entire economic structure of ceaseless consumption.
But, hey what do I know maybe exergaming and dance dance revolution will bail us out of this. Until then I will seek first to understand and work to create a mini world where making the “wrong” decisions like smashing vegetables and exercising for no good reason are a little easier and maybe, just maybe…automatic.
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