Not intended to be an insult: I find it astonishing that it’s possible to not notice that people mostly eat for enjoyment, and that eating to sustain oneself is not the norm. (Of course, this is coming from a person who eats mostly for enjoyment, and couldn’t imagine that some people mostly eat to (edit: I wrote it backwards) sustain themselves.)
In particular, why do you think that so many people were overweight/obese? You flagged this with your remark about the fact that people mostly “cannot just-”, but still, mechanistically, what did you think was causing most people to overeat?
As I mentioned, I eat to sustain myself. I find quite repellent the idea of growing a bigger liver just to be able to eat more, and it did not even occur to me that someone would want to do that.
As for why people have got a lot fatter over recent decades, there are various ideas, but I don’t think anyone knows. ETA: See also.
Just as a look into a different world, ever since I can remember I have loved eating a lot, have wished that I could do more without consequence, and I have dedicated a lot of mental energy to try to figure out ways of maximizing the amount of eating I get to do at a minimum of effort and penalty, and conversely, eating less than I want to involves a considerable about of dissatisfaction and suffering.
If I could magically eat as much as I wanted to without suffering negative consequences to my health (or getting over full), I would basically be eating constantly and it would be one of the main sources of baseline hedonism I have, the same way others listen to music, take baths, etc. Even though it would be expensive.
Projecting my mind onto others, I think this is why a lot of fad diets exist, and there’s a disproportionately large amount of low quality discourse about diet and nutrition. A lot of people want the same thing to be possible and are coping hard to believe that it could be so.
Viewed in this light, the “growing a bigger liver” thing seems like a pretty straightforward idea, although I admit that it sounds pretty grotesque from a certain perspective. (Still, though, by comparison, some people do want to grow more muscle primarily so that they can eat more (something I explicitly did the calculations for), and on the grotesque side, people have taken some pretty nasty drugs or just gotten themselves infected with tapeworms just to stay thin.)
Not intended to be an insult: I find it astonishing that it’s possible to not notice that people mostly eat for enjoyment, and that eating to sustain oneself is not the norm. (Of course, this is coming from a person who eats mostly for enjoyment, and couldn’t imagine that some people mostly eat to (edit: I wrote it backwards) sustain themselves.)
In particular, why do you think that so many people were overweight/obese? You flagged this with your remark about the fact that people mostly “cannot just-”, but still, mechanistically, what did you think was causing most people to overeat?
As I mentioned, I eat to sustain myself. I find quite repellent the idea of growing a bigger liver just to be able to eat more, and it did not even occur to me that someone would want to do that.
As for why people have got a lot fatter over recent decades, there are various ideas, but I don’t think anyone knows. ETA: See also.
Just as a look into a different world, ever since I can remember I have loved eating a lot, have wished that I could do more without consequence, and I have dedicated a lot of mental energy to try to figure out ways of maximizing the amount of eating I get to do at a minimum of effort and penalty, and conversely, eating less than I want to involves a considerable about of dissatisfaction and suffering.
If I could magically eat as much as I wanted to without suffering negative consequences to my health (or getting over full), I would basically be eating constantly and it would be one of the main sources of baseline hedonism I have, the same way others listen to music, take baths, etc. Even though it would be expensive.
Projecting my mind onto others, I think this is why a lot of fad diets exist, and there’s a disproportionately large amount of low quality discourse about diet and nutrition. A lot of people want the same thing to be possible and are coping hard to believe that it could be so.
Viewed in this light, the “growing a bigger liver” thing seems like a pretty straightforward idea, although I admit that it sounds pretty grotesque from a certain perspective. (Still, though, by comparison, some people do want to grow more muscle primarily so that they can eat more (something I explicitly did the calculations for), and on the grotesque side, people have taken some pretty nasty drugs or just gotten themselves infected with tapeworms just to stay thin.)