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it's not that you're entirely wrong, will--it's just that the position you're arguing is way too simple, and that this is a kinda fucked up thread for a serious discussion on this question because it departs from that loopy faux-news story about the "fat virus"...
when i have some time, i'll see if i can find the study on the supermarket geography in the states, particularly in urban areas---the article i posted to references it and other materials---fact is that peoples's choices are differentially constrained, that it's simply not the case that everyone has the same kind of access to a range of types of food. it simply isn't the case in the united states.
the problems of supermarkets (you know, mainstream ones) and their intertwining with the industrial food system is another central issue--on that the article above is quite good. and it's good on the consequences of that. again, what folk *can* choose between is differentially constrained--there's no one-size-fits-all explanation.
and this is a global problem. if you look at it in more global terms, the structural features emerge pretty clearly and function to situate--and to a significant extent diminsh the role of--the moral impairment arguments that seem so popular in these threads.
this isn't to say that there are no people whose choices are not the driver behind obesity--but it is to say that you have to think in more complex ways about obesity--and treat it as a social problem---not to fall into the all-too-easy trap of reducing it to one or another version of a matter of "will"---all that's changed from one end of the thread to this one is that the language of that argument has become a bit more polite, and so the space is now not so repellent that folk who oppose that "explanation" are not inclined to provide other information.
what you do with it is up to you, of course.
and there's alot more information available. this isn't an easy problem. it really isnt.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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