Op/Ed Fridays: Obesity and wonder drugs
The New Yorker this week published an article titled “Diet Drugs Work: Why Won’t Doctors Prescribe Them?”
I responded (on Hacker News, where you can see discussion on it)
More relevant questions:
- Why don’t we stop subsidizing corn so much?
- Why don’t we teach effective nutrition and cooking in school?
- Why don’t we teach effective exercise, sports, and fitness in schools?
- If we can ban alcohol and tobacco sales to children, why not things like added sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, etc?
- If we can ban alcohol and tobacco advertising to children, why not products with added sugar, hydrogenated oils, corn syrup, etc?
- Why don’t we limit advertising on fast and junk “food”?
- Why don’t we provide healthy lunches to school children instead of using them to subsidize agricultural conglomerates for low quality food?
- Why don’t we stop subsidizing fossil fuels so much so people would walk and ride bikes more?
- Why don’t we align our medical system with prevention instead of expensive and risky cures?
You can come up with plenty more questions that would mostly obviate the need to wonder about obesity and wonder drugs to cure it. The overwhelming majority of people would benefit from changes in diet and exercise requiring no chemicals needing FDA approval. Fresh fruits and vegetables seasoned with fresh herbs and spices taste better than anything, at least to me, and it’s hard to eat too much of them. Few feelings feel better than the exhaustion of even moderate exercise.
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