Can you expand on your point about American pharmaceudical consumption? It reeks of the naturalist fallacy but I realize you were mainly mentioning it as part of a broader statement so I'd like to hear more.
Stuff like "well I'm getting on a flight, time to pop a couple of xanax" seems much more common in films/TV that America exports than, say, real life in the UK.
I know plenty of people who use illegal drugs but still have that perception of America thanks to Hollywood/etc.
Personally, I don't know the data between countries, and while I've been to the US a bunch of times I've never tried to obtain medicine there legally or illegally. But I have found a big difference between UK ("You want valium? Are you sure? OK, here are 4x 2mg pills") vs France/Belgium ("Do you mean 10mg, I don't think valium comes that weak..." before realising they could prescribe 2mg indeed, and multiple times I've asked for a controlled drug in FR/BE and had the doctor reply "how many boxes" without even asking why I wanted it. Purely anecdotal, though.)
Even for non-pillpopping writers, I imagine it's often more interesting to make a character take drugs/medicine than not.
Ultimately, a lot of the world's views of America are shaped by the versions we see in fiction - I've been to the US from Europe more than most people I know, and I have plenty of American friends/colleagues. But still, I spend more time watching fictional versions of America on my TV than I do experiencing America myself.
The naturalist fallacy is often actual empirical reality (sometimes natural states are better).
It's just the fact that it's not always the case, which makes it a fallacy.
But in the case, overloading on drugs for every BS annoyance, and having them needlessly pushed by doctors on payola and gifts from pharmaceuticals, is worse than not doing it.
Normalizing obesity because you can take some drugs to stay alive (artificially lowering your cholesterol, blood pressure, etc) might not be the smartest idea ever. But yeah, maybe it's the naturalist fallacy. To each their own.
Would those obese people be better off with bad cholesterol, blood pressure, etc.? It seems like you're trying to avoid outright saying we should just let fat people die as an example to everyone else.
What? How on earth would you conclude this from that I wrote?
I was replying to the idea that it is the "naturalist fallacy" to say that it is better to be develop good habits (in this case, eat better), than to just take some drugs and maintain the bad habits. Obese people should take the drugs, I don't wish for anyone to die. Even better for them would be to lose the weight.
The US has a huge (pun intended) obesity problem, and it seems related to worse health outcomes across several dimensions. This is just a fact.
I don’t have any special insight, but in my part of the world that’s definitely a common perception of the USA, usually attributed to lax regulation around what kind of pharmaceutical advertising os permitted.
It's an interesting topic because I've heard a South African joke that every American has a pharmacy in their house (talking about over the counter meds in that case) so I guess it's a common perception around the world. It's funny because most Americans have the opposite view (except regarding mental health medicine for some reason), if I had to summarize the attitude it's essentially "I hate being sick and I've got shit to do".
It's not so much about 'hate being sick and got shit to do' and more about 'I hate feeling sick but going to the doctor will cost me a small fortune, so I'll stick to over the counter medicine until I feel so bad I can't avoid it'.
- the municipal water supplies are full of pharma drugs, as is our meat supply
- UCSF, the paper author, consider HFCS to be a poison and likely explains why there was no obesity in 60's photos, yet over half of Americans today. As a result, a huge number are on blood pressure and other drugs, which also end up in the water supply.
> UCSF, the paper author, consider HFCS to be a poison and likely explains why there was no obesity in 60's photos
I presume you're referring to Dr. Lustig of UCSF's research on sugar, or more specifically his position that fructose is a toxin akin to ethanol due to how similarly they're processed by the liver.
If so, Dr. Lustig is careful to point out that this is not an HFCS-specific issue. Sugar and HFCS both contain fructose, and are essentially identical in this regard. This kind of misinformed demonizing of HFCS results in people thinking sweets are perfectly safe as long as they contain sugar and not HFCS, UCSF does not back such a position AFAIK.
I'm not missing that point, and actually agree with you re: HFCS replacing fat in processed foods.
You're just being harmfully imprecise with your claim, because it implies non-HFCS sweeteners aren't poison - according to UCSF no less. The fructose is the poison, and it's not HFCS-specific. It happens that HFCS is the thing that's everywhere thanks to corn subsidies, sure, but there's still plenty of non-HFCS fructose sources on the shelves of stores that are equally harmful. You're not in the clear by specifically avoiding HFCS.
I observe overweight strangers in the grocery store checkout isle extolling the virtues of eating sugar but not HFCS as they toss candy on the conveyor about once a month. It's rather depressing.
Edit:
BTW I suspect you're shadow-banned in case you didn't know, as your comments in this thread have been immediately [dead]. Looking at your general comments history there's a lot of [dead].
If you haven't seen/heard any of Lustig's talks on the subject, he makes a very compelling argument re: fructose being a toxin. They're readily available on youtube.
Excess fructose consumption is implicated in causing non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which affects about 20-25% of people in Europe, and 30-40% of adults in the US. [0]
This statistic alone gives me cause for grave concern WRT covid-19 outcomes for those 30-40% of American adults should they get infected.
