>Everyone knows that obesity is a bad thing, and that it can be avoided by not eating too many calories. Why are there so many obese people?

Because unhealthy food is delicious, cheap AND addictive.

>Since everything else we've tried to get overweight people to stop eating so much has failed it might be worth looking at different approaches.

Well, a ban on refined starches and corn sugar work quite well. People were much healthier (from an obesity perspective) when such products were not available.

> Well, a ban on refined starches and corn sugar work quite well. People were much healthier (from an obesity perspective) when such products were not available.

Do Scotland, New Zealand, Hungary use "corn sugar"? We don't use it much in England and we (along with those other countries) also have problems with obesity.

I'll happily accept that calories from sugar are a problem.

>Do Scotland, New Zealand, Hungary use "corn sugar"? We don't use it much in England and we (along with those other countries) also have problems with obesity.

How much of a problem, though, compared to say, the US? I've travelled quite a bit in Europe, Asia, etc, and I've seen nothing compared to the US level of obesity. Heck, the kind of people you'll see in a Walmart (and not isolated -- tons of them, and all over the states)...

I guess it's also other stuff: deep fried anything, Sneaker and Mars bars, chips (crisps), BS "sports" drinks, sodas, etc etc.

New Zealand is 3rd in the OECD in terms of obesity, not far behind the US and Mexico: http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/Obesity-Update-2014.p...

I'd rather be obese than give up my ability to eat products made with refined starches or corn sugar. Wouldn't this have a big impact on the food industry, too?

>I'd rather be obese than give up my ability to eat products made with refined starches or corn sugar.

That's a really bad choice, though, that a lot of people make. Perhaps it will be good if that choice was eliminated, or made more difficult with a large tax. At least then people would think twice before ordering a $10 corn-syrup soda vs a $2 no-sugar one.

>Wouldn't this have a big impact on the food industry, too?

Well, the smoking bans also hurt the tobacco industry too. If an industry relies in causing people harm by using cheap substitutes (e.g corn sugar for sugar etc), or selling addictive shit, let them be impacted.

> At least then people would think twice before ordering a $10 corn-syrup soda vs a $2 no-sugar one.

That's just it, I don't like the idea of bullying people into healthy eating. I don't want to end up in a future where it's illegal to consume more than 2000 calories in a day. Fortunately people don't seem to like this idea given the reception of the large soda ban in NYC.

Well, I'm against bullying from the government too.

But in this case I don't really consider it bullying but rather punishment to greedy industries using crap materials in their food products.

Would you support it if "bullying" was shown to work?

Leaving people to freely chose their food is obviously not working. We could pay people to eat more healthily - would you support that? So why is it different to add costs to unhealthy food?

Of course it would "work" in the sense that taking away people's freedom to eat unhealthy food would generally make them healthier. That doesn't make it right to do. It would also "work" to chase fat people around with sticks all day. I don't like the idea of restricting people's personal choice to force them to be more healthy. If I, fully informed of the consequences, want to buy soda and twinkies, I should have the full right to do so and not have it made economically unviable due to ridiculous fees and taxes.

Some people whose comfortable level of eating happens to be above what they burn in their average day would rather eat what they want instead of counting calories, going hungry, and exercising all day.