I think the obesity problem is linked to the fact that many people have to work 60 hours a week to survive and don't have the time/energy to get in shape.
Capitalism has taken a large swath of people out of the dating game just due to working to survive.
People work 10% fewer hours now than in the 1960s, but the obesity rate has gone up from 13% in that time period to 36%. The obesity crisis is IMO more related to what we eat, and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle.
This may be true, but people are probably commuting for vastly more time per day to their suburban wasteland house that can only be driven to, than fewer minutes worked would compensate for, and the money doesn't go as far—possibly because they felt spending $60k on a dumb car, and 9 hours a week in it, was more sensible than spending 2 hours a week in a physical hobby.
Total hours worked by people who are being paid. If you’re working on a farm but you’re a farmer’s wife you’re not being paid. Female liberation resulted in a very large increase in the labor force, a much less drastic rise in hours worked than in paid labor hours.
Being overweight is overwhelmingly related to eating habits. As the sage advice goes: “you can’t outrun a bad diet”
You may have an argument with the absolute bullshit that people eat in our consumerist society but the fact of the matter is, if your calorie needs are 2000/day and you eat 14000 calories per week of grains, pulses, veg, fruit, meat, etc in the ‘right’ amounts, you’ll stay trim if you’re trim, you’ll stay fat if you’re fat, and any changes need you to adjust the calorie balance accordingly through eating more, eating less or exercising more.
Obesity is largely linked to economic incentives and urban design. The USA for example is dead set on building car dependent cities, which has an knock on effect on both the amount of free time available to leisure and the activity.
In some countries people are slimmer without making a real effort cause there's a higher percentage of people walking to work, and there's less time spent in traffic so that can be redirected to leisure and exercise.
The obesity problem is overwhelmingly because of the amount of sugar/HFCS pumped into our foods. We are working less today than 50 years ago, yet those times no one was morbidly obese. Obesity is caused by food, not by the amount you exercise or move.
Ehhhh... I don't know that capitalism can be blamed for personal irresponsibility. I'd say it's more of a motivation / knowledge thing. You don't have to live in the gym to get in shape. I spend about 4.5 hours per week total. Even when I've been in the very rare 70-80 hour/week death march, I could take an hour out of my day to go to the gym and lift.
Similarly, dieting is not an activity, more so the absence of one (shoving food in your mouth). When I'm cutting weight, I have more time because I'm not cooking eating food all the damn time. Eat a carrot rather than a Pizza to lose weight is not super rare knowledge. It IS uncomfortable, though.
Okay. And now add any of the following, or a combination, to that situation:
* Ill partner or family members to take care of
* Child(ren)
* Studying
* Long travel times
* Irregular working times
* Poor upbringing food wise
* Stress
* Sleep deprivation
* etc
Is it still so easy then? That pizza tastes good and is real comforting.
But to get obese..you actually need to eatmany more calories than you need for a lot of time. If obese people cannot stop eating unhealthy food the problem is mental.
step 0: if you’re single and think you NEED to work 60 hrs/wk to survive, quit BS’ing yourself. get a roommate and split the rent.
step 1: gather some savings and take an honest (3mo+) break from work.
step 2: take note of which of your habits actually change when freed from the work-imposed time restrictions.
my personal experience: good habits don’t just spontaneously occur out of the vacuum. and social connections don’t just come knocking on your door. you have to decide these things are important to you, motivate yourself, and build your life in support of them.
to the extent that we don’t teach non-job skills in school, that’s a societal failure. if by “capitalism” you’re referring to how much we shape schooling to focus on making you a productive worker, then sure. but this is as much a failure of our democratic systems (which govern schools) and our social norms around child raising (wherein it’s acceptable to believe that govt schooling is the only learning/wisdom a child needs to be given).
“capitalism” is a boogeyman and — without admitting anything of its merits/faults — using it in such a way only serves to keep yourself from understanding the problems you face more concretely.
Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years. Socialism has failed every time it has been tried. (Also stop describing everything you don’t like as “Capitalism”, it is intellectually lazy, instead describe what aspect of Capitalism caused the thing you don’t like directly and provably and with a clear alternative that wouldn’t have had worse downsides)
Good critiques of Capitalism are important to help it continue to evolve, compete, and win in a competitive marketplace of ideas.
I have increasingly noticed this general trend (here, on Reddit, and elsewhere) to just blame a myriad of societal ills on “Capitalism”. Sometimes it’s related to economics or whatever, but more often it’s really a non-sequitur. Some of the problems blamed on Capitalism, it’s not at all clear how communism or socialism or any other system would result in a different outcome. It’s become a thought-ending cliche.
Agree, just tribal signaling, “thing I thoughtlessly think is bad is bad”
I feel the same about every bad weather event being “caused” by climate change in the media. The models predictions are so vague people could blame anything on climate change. Not saying climate change isn’t happening, it is, but blaming everything on it is intellectually dishonest, costs legitimacy, and can lead to poor policy.
> Capitalism has taken more people out of poverty than anything else on planet earth and produced incredible abundance and flourishing in the past 200 years.
That's not wrong, but it came at the cost of massively depleting the oil reserves and polluting the ecosystems.
The same Would have happened with communism or any other economic system, unless we were kept at a pre-industrial level of tech. Collectivist systems don't particularly take better care of their environment.
Capitalism has taken a large swath of people out of the dating game just due to working to survive.