There are many worthy problems in the world, global warming, the rise of potentially viable long term dictatorships and oligarchies, socioeconomic inequality, not just within nations, but between them and more. But a man is just one person, and you can only do so much. The obesity epidemic is something I do care about, and I do think I have the skill and capability to do something about it too.

The Obesity Epidemic

Having a waist to height ratio1 of around 0.46 is fairly difficult in many developed nations, and increasingly, it’s becoming difficult if you live any kind of middle class lifestyle in developing nations too. Ever since the 70s or early 80s, the entire world outside of a few places like japan has been on a steady march to increased obesity rates bit by bit. 2 If you look at pictures of americans in the 70s, you’ll notice the vast majority of people under 35 are skinny. Now %88 of americans are metabolically unfit, %30-%40 are just plain obese and type 2 diabetes has become a medical problem the common person is aware of. It is getting worse too.

This is one of the larger problems of the world, and food is really the solution to solving it. I hope I can think of a way to offer food that will directly address the metabolic problem. It will probably target the well off at first, and like tesla starting with their roadster and would probably go down the price scale until a typical middle or lower financial class can start to afford it too. It would probably start with data and software, like levels or other products, and then might turn into a restaurant chain completely with an ability to subscribe to a weight loss diet and a set of prepackaged foods sold in a grocery store.

I also think tools like the shapescale and similar can help people properly track fat loss vs something as frustrating as the weight scale or hard to track small changes in, like your waist circumference. Or too hard to do accurately as someone unskilled, like skin fold caliper measurements.

But first, I have to solve it for myself. My WHR is at edge of healthy at 0.51 for a man, but still not at the level of a typical Japanese person or athlete, which is around 0.45.

I’m not the only one who thinks this is a mystery, it’s a mystery for everyone. I really like this article series about it: A Chemical Hunger

  1. I prefer waist to height ratio over waist to hip ratio because you only need to make one measurement, and it’s easier to measure your bellybutton or waist compared to your hips, which are kind of ambiguous. Your height changes rarely and is easy know where exactly to measure. ↩︎

  2. Seriously, go look at photos of people in the USA from the 70s in day to day life and it’s uncanny about how few obese or overweight people you see in those photos. Ask anyone 50+ to corroborate that to you. Something has changed. ↩︎