So far, fear has driven investors to sell consumer-exposed stocks. A basket of such companies — including Oreo cookies maker Mondelez International Inc. and Modelo beer producer Constellation Brand Inc. — is down nearly 9% since early August with losses roughly double those of the S&P 500 Index, while makers of things like insulin pumps have wiped out close to a third of their value over the same stretch amid concerns that fewer people will need their products.
We have this cultural fixation that “mind over matter” and willpower alone can do anything, but the reality is that we are just animals with a slight bit of clever self-awareness on top. I feel like judging humankind as pathetic is misplaced here, when the reality we don’t want to admit is that modern processed foods are as unnatural to our reward systems and present hazardous habit-forming as some drugs. There are a lot of people in situations with food that they can’t easily get out of on their own and we should maybe consider whether there is such a thing as a food product too addictive to allow for sale to the public
My concern is that they’re replacing a group of unnatural products with a pharmaceutical, without addressing the underlying causes. Most people regain weight after ending use of the drug. This is quite an expensive medication, as well. Also check out the list of side effects.
While it’s reasonable, I don’t think the public would accept broad restrictions on basic food composition.
I’m sorry, I should have been more explicit that I don’t really condone weight loss pharmaceuticals either. The situation needs to change; it just sounded a little bit like you were overlooking the underlying cause to blame personal responsibility/willpower of people who might be resorting to meds for their weight/health management. Obviously that’s not the case and I was mistaken lol.
In my mind, addressing the underlying causes isn’t going to be “broad restrictions on basic food composition”, it’s going to be broad restrictions on highly processed foods - sanity checks, if you will, mainly by a category of regulatory actions similar to forbidding or limiting HFCS usage by manufacturers, or putting reasonable limits on how many calories a drive-through business is allowed to sell per person per transaction or something. Maybe certain food additives that are particularly addictive or unhealthy
I don’t see a reasonable alternative other than “educate everybody out of it” which seems like an equally Sisyphean task and doesn’t adequately address the role the food industry plays in engineering these kinds of dependencies for profit.