Comment by cthalupa
17 hours ago
Except this entire narrative is thrown off by the fact that obesity has been a problem before any of that and is a problem in countries without any of that. Even places like Korea where you are literally shamed constantly by friends and family for being even remotely overweight has obesity growing all while having basically the exact opposite culture of what you are complaining about.
Basically the only developed country where overweight and obesity have stayed flat is Japan.
South Korea's obesity threshold is much lower than western Europe and the US. There you're considered obese at 25 kg/m2 or above. In Europe and the US it's 30 kg/m2.
There's also factors like this: https://biz.chosun.com/en/en-science/2026/08/17/SC54HFSN7JAU...
I didn't mean to say the cases I listed are exclusively the only ones, but I still maintain they are a major part of it.
Japan teaches accountability and taking personal responsibility -- it's a country where its capital city can get away with barely any places to dispose of your trash and not be littered. DEI is barely a thing, if at all. And it definitely does not celebrate mediocrity.
Yeah, it's almost impressive how often hypotheses for what's causing rising obesity rates simply ignore actual data. I haven't been able to find it again, but a while back I stumbled on a journal article that was basically some epidemiologists ranting about this. IIRC there are whole categories of proposed causes that you can eliminate just based on the fact that that the rise is correlated across age groups.