There are non caloric nutrients in food that are absolutely vital for human health and happiness and when you are deficient in those nutrients your body will compel you to continue eating until you have met your baselines.

Solve the nutritional problem and you will most likely go a long long way towards solving the obesity problem.

[–] winterayars@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I've had the theory that people in the US are a lot more malnourished than we realize. All that low quality food means they're probably missing something essential, or only getting it alongside a ton of sugar (aka HFCS).

[–] Thorry84@feddit.nl 5 points 1 year ago

HFCS is evil and outlawed in a lot of the civilized world. It's a known cause of cancer and tricks the brain into eating more.

It has such a high caloric density, a survival instinct inside the human brain kicks in. It says: wow this is really good, we don't get many opportunities to eat something this good, eat as much of it as you can. This makes sense in a cave man survival scenario, where you happen on some honey or sugary fermented fruits. Then you have a bigger chance of surviving if you eat as much of it as you possibly can. But in modern life where we have an infinite supply of these things it's a killer.