Tamar Haspel is one of the people I follow on Twitter. She and her husband raise oysters in Maine, and she writes on food and diet issues, usually with the refrain that diet panaceas are just that, panaceas not based on hard science. That's a position I can identify with.
She tweeted this about two new promising obesity drugs (more in the thread):
For all y'all dissing obesity drugs:
— Tamar Haspel (@TamarHaspel) September 16, 2021
EVERYONE would prefer it if we could all just eat healthful foods we enjoy to be the weight we want to be.
But we can't, and if you insist that's the only possible solution you're abandoning people, often desperate, who want to lose weight https://t.co/JuvPuut4b9
Her point is that we eat not because of hunger but because of temptation. It got me thinking. As I've written, I think, I'm a creature of habit. I'm also skinny. Are the two facts related? I think they are: for whatever reason I have the habit of regarding food as fuel, to be consumed as soon as possible without wasting any time or energy in savoring, or in deciding what to eat. So my meals, at least the ones I make or buy as opposed to those my wife prepares, tend to be the same from day to day.
So my decisions on what to eat don't allow much room for temptation by food. (Nor, since I eat regularly, does feeling hungry have much to do with it--by eating at the times and with the food I'm habituated to I avoid hungry.)
I'll jump from this analysis of me to extrapolate to human institutions--most institutions are based on habits. That's part of what upsets us about covid-19; the pandemic has upset our habits which means undermining the foundations of some of our institutions.
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