Comment Re:Or maybe, you know... (Score 1) 138
Next up, the new diet craze for lazy people. Blackout blinds.
I get you don't think this is useful, but why do you have to make stupid remarks? Obviously obesity rates have been rising significantly in the past few decades. There are a number of fairly obvious likely causes for this trend, but there may be many minor ones that have changed in recent decades that could be contributing -- like, for example, the amount of "light pollution" these days, which probably contributes to ambient light in bedrooms (along with decreased numbers of people in rural areas where light pollution is scarce), coupled with increased tendencies to leave various electronic devices on all the time.
Who cares if it's the "#1 reason why people don't exercise and eat right"? If it's in the top 20, it can probably be helpful to know it, and for some people, it could actually be leading to other health problems, including obesity.
I know there's this common assumption that diet and exercise is only about willpower, but the reality of life is that there are all sorts of psychological and physical factors which can make it easier or harder to pursue healthy habits. And being exhausted a lot of the time is not generally conducive to such habits. Obviously for many people blackout blinds are not the magic ticket to a thin body -- but combined with some other things, better rest could make it easier for some people to live in a more healthy manner.
You and the moderators are being too hard on the GP. It's disappointing to see posts marked as flamebait just because they are not written daintily enough.
The GP is saying that we need to stop looking for weak feel-good correlations and start dealing with the major factors! If you eat 2500 calories a day and only burn 1500 then you are eventually going to be obese.
It's commonly accepted that the cheap availability of high-calorie, empty-calorie diets is the major contributor to the obesity epidemic. I mean, come on, you can buy a 44oz drink that contains 1/3 of your recommended calorie intake for for under $2.
Couple that with lower exertion rate due to the loss of manual labor jobs (from the UK) to other countries and the time wasted noodling around on electronic media and it isn't hard to see why people are getting fat.
Maybe fat people just like a brighter bedroom since they are generally less nimble and don't want to trip on things when they get up to go the bathroom.
