Today you inject a medicine and it takes away your appetite: is obesity over?
I'm not so sure that the solution to obesity is to inject yourself with a drug and, moreover, expensive...
And there are others that take away your desire to smoke: do we run out of willpower?
During the last 20 years, 38% of humans have become obese, and in 2035, if we project this same rate into the future, half of humanity will have an excess weight harmful to their health.
That's a lot of fat.
About 4,000 million people will suffer from obesity all over the planet. And a hypothesis to explain this, which you point to now, is that we have lost the willpower to avoid eating too much.
Am I not right?
It is a hypothesis, but another one that we have verified is that our willpower is not the same as that of our ancestors. What has changed is the overabundance of food around us: we have appetizing food at our feet and in our pockets all day everywhere.
Should we limit the supply of food?
The demonstration that this limitation works is that of tobacco. We found that we did not succeed in reducing its consumption with advertising campaigns, but simply by increasing its price – and it is still too cheap – and reducing its points of sale.
How do you know?
Because the fewer tobacco outlets there are and the more expensive they are, the less people smoke. And we have proven it in many countries. Price slows down consumption more than any awareness campaign.
The more difficult it is to abuse a consumption, the less will it requires to limit it?
And that's why I think it's not about great personal or psychological efforts. Reducing addictions is simpler and depends mostly on measures and public policies.
Against addiction, public action?
I have dedicated my life to studying the mechanisms that explain our behavior and its relationship with our health. For years, we designed and tested multiple biomarker tests to anticipate the onset of type 2 diabetes or cancer and their interactions with our behavior...
And what has he learned?
That awareness campaigns did not succeed in changing unhealthy behaviors: the patient who ate too much or smoked continued to do so, consciously or not...
And what about exercising?
It also depends more on the environment and the opportunities to do it than on your will: who exercises on a freeway?, who can afford a gym or a house in the countryside or near a beautiful park?
Whoever sets his mind to it can't achieve it?
The great scientist who managed to defeat cholera was John Snow, who managed to identify that the source of the contagion was in a certain water pump...
Bravo to Dr. Snow.
But this was only the beginning of the end of the epidemic, because to slow it down it was necessary to get people to stop using the infected water.
With?
If you told people it was dangerous, but didn't give them any other water, it wasn't easy to convince them with ads. Many could not afford bottled water. So today information campaigns are not enough, we need to provide the resources and alternatives to be healthy.
And close the polluted sources?
How to avoid the thirst and dirt of those who cannot use others? The water distribution system had to be reformed. And this is also the only effective solution to obesity: reform how we grow, distribute and sell food so that half of the population is not overweight.
Make junk food, like tobacco, more expensive and with fewer points of sale?
The fight against tobacco has been a success or a failure: since 70 years ago it was shown that it caused cancer until today, millions of smokers have died from this cause, and, in that time, the health of 20% of the world population – in Spain 25% – has been harmed by its addiction.
Then it's not for throwing rockets of joy.
The good news is that 70 years ago one in three people smoked, and today, one in five. The bad thing is: why does anyone still smoke?
Will it be harder or easier to implement policies against widespread obesity?
Another good news is that more than a hundred countries, including Spain, are already taking measures against additives, the automatic sale of junk food in schools and offices, the composition of ultra-processed...
Isn't that also up to each individual?
Your willpower to not gain weight will be more effective if junk food is more expensive and less ubiquitous. Junk food and tobacco are still too cheap.
