You're doubling down on the "obesity is a moral disease" stance here ("gluttony" is explicitly a moral judgement). I've come to suspect that it really isn't as simple as "lack of self-control": too many people I know have gained significant weight due to medications or medical conditions, or despite sincere and sustained efforts to bring their weight under control. (I'm also quite intrigued by claims that even broad populations of lab animals in the US have gained weight over the same period that the US population has, despite their carefully managed diets and activity levels.)

Once something is this common, it just stops being reasonable to blame the individuals rather than broader factors. (In much the same way, if half of my students fail an exam, I'm pretty sure that's not entirely their fault: I clearly screwed something up in the teaching or the testing.)

The broadest factor is US food politics. And that's far easier to fix than trying to cure cancer - end market manipulation that keep the costs of some goods artificially high and the others artificially low.

Somehow instead we've created a food economy where the absolute worst food for you, even though it's not very economical to grow, is far cheaper because of the disincentive to produce things like cheese and non-bovine livestock and the incentive to grow corn.

    "Once something is this common, it just stops being reasonable to blame the individuals rather than broader factors."

You are introducing one additional broad factor of world hunger through increase in food prices. And that is not something I would like to be morally responsible for.

I'm OK with people overeating - as long as they receive the consequences of doing so. They are adults who can make their own decisions with the trade-off between food consumption vs weight. Removing the consequences? That's where my moral judgement is - at all those people who think indulging our senses and removing consequences to those who do without thinking about the cost to everyone else - and not just the moral cost.

And, it looks like that includes you.

    ""gluttony" is explicitly a moral judgement"

'gluttony' is a word. Whether it's a moral judgement is in your mind. In it's most technical terms it means "over-consumption of food, drink, or wealth items to the point of extravagance or waste." It's like "goto". It's only bad if used with judgement - which I did not - only saying the utility of mankind would be greater if we do not artificially increase our metabolism to remove the consequence of overeating.

    " too many people I know have gained significant weight due to medications or medical conditions, or despite sincere and sustained efforts to bring their weight under control."

Then that is the medication's problem. Why is obesity a much smaller problem in other countries? Why are so many people taking anxiety medications, for example?

And that is closer to the core problems in society than solving obesity via medication - obesity is just a symptom and by removing the appearance of the symptom you never get to solve the core problem, and additionally, make the world worse off by introducing more unintended consequences further away from what is really wrong with society.

Your argument over 'gluttony' is silly. Without shared meanings behind words, we cannot communicate.

The common, shared, understanding of gluttony comes with moral failing. After all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_deadly_sins#Gluttony

Which states: "Derived from the Latin gluttire, meaning to gulp down or swallow, gluttony (Latin, gula) is the over-indulgence and over-consumption of anything to the point of waste."

Now, I highly doubt you have a different definition in mind. You are only backtracking now that people are heavily calling you out for it.

So why are you backtracking here? The rest of your comments indicate are really consistent with someone who is in fact judging people who are obese.

If you really aren't judging them, perhaps instead of arguing that 'gluttony' is a morally neutral word (it isn't), choose a different word? That's the nice thing about english, it has a lot of expressivity.

I had looked it up before I used it. It was a deliberate choice of a word. I'm not Christian and the use of the word "gluttony" was used to precisely mean the over-consumption of food. There is no backtracking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluttony

"Gluttony, derived from the Latin gluttire meaning to gulp down or swallow, means over-indulgence and over-consumption of food, drink, or wealth items to the point of extravagance or waste. In some Christian denominations, it is considered one of the seven deadly sins—a misplaced desire of food or its withholding from the needy."

My original comment states:

"Technically removing the consequences of gluttony is likely to increase demand for food products and therefore increase its price"

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I am morally against removing the consequences of gluttony, because it will increase human suffering through hunger as an unintended consequence.

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People can call me out on it, threaten me with all kinds of abuse, I will not take one inch back from my statement.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy_...

Which level are you?

Are you perceiving me as judging those who are obese, and so is judging me for it?

Obesity is absolutely a moral disease, in the sense that you don't get fat without eating yourself fat, as well as a disease of our society, in terms of our society producing foods that encourage people to eat themselves fat.

Broader factors certainly share the blame, but so do individuals. It is possible for almost anyone to be thin in today's society, in the same way that it was possible for almost anyone to get fat a few hundred years ago (given access to plentiful enough food).

Saying "it's not just down to the individuals" is fair and true. Saying "it's not down to the individuals at all, how dare you imply that it might be" is obviously wrong-headed.

In general, I agree that there's always some responsibility on the individual. But in a lot of cases, I really don't think it's helpful to look at it that way.

I have a friend who was in great physical shape consistently for years. Then (going from memory on the details here) at some point she got on a new medication for migraines, and within a few months she'd gained a surprising number of pounds. Her eating and activity habits didn't change all that much along the way: the drugs just affected her metabolism somehow. Nothing she's tried since has gotten the weight off (and it's not feasible to drop the only medication that's been able to stop the searing pain).

So tell me: which part of that was a moral failure on her part? Because you've made it clear that if you saw her in the street, that's what you'd be thinking.

The case you mention is clearly exceptional. It does not explain the huge rise in obesity over the last few decades.

To clarify: when I say "obesity is a moral disease" I'm talking about obesity as a social trend, not a specific overweight person - those can have very good explanations... but the majority don't, imho.

So you think the population just got less moral recently? How about the fact that cheap food has less nutrition per calorie, and people have less money available in their food budget now. So they eat more calories because high-calorie food is what they can afford.

A lot of your statements are ignoring broad swaths of biology and neuro-psych research!

To talk about weight gain without digging in to the biochemical reasons why is ridiculous. To just chalk it up to "well the foods are bad, and hey don't eat them" is also just as ignorant as those poor people who are victims of the food industry.

And yes, I say victims, because I believe that the food that is typically produced, and labeled as healthy, is highly addictive. One of the things we are discovering is that much of what we eat affects our dopamine systems! Literally our food is addictive and has activation pathways similar to cocaine or heroin!

You have very little choice when struggling against your dopamine system. It's very powerful. Research in to 'will power' indicates its substantially less powerful than people think.

So, now you are saying people who are following advice, or forced by economic circumstances in to eating food that has been incredibly harmful (and carcinogenic!) are immoral. You are expecting everyone to be super-human, or you'll say they are literally bad people.

I refuse to take such a pessimistic view of humanity. People do what makes sense to them, and it is the responsibility of ALLEGED intelligent people like yourself to HELP them. Not sit on a high perch and laugh at them!

So, I finish this off by saying, not only is obesity a disease, and not a moral failing, that in fact YOU are the one with a moral failing!

Exactly. We can all agree that the environment that Humans live in is considerably different than it was 10K years ago. Expecting our bodies and minds to function well, within it, is asking for a lot.

I have no shame in taking medications and using technologies that help me sustain normality within an abnormal environment. Maybe someday we will also come up with a cure for 'moral judgement', as well.

Vaccination increases lifespan which leads to increased resource consumption, and the planet just can not afford it. So until we figure out how to transcend into beams of light I'm against it.