The Seventh Deadliest Sin
We tend to blame obesity on gluttony – but that’s exactly backward:
Although people struggling with obesity tend to have less-responsive reward pathways—they even have fewer dopamine receptors—overeating makes the problem worse, further reducing the pleasure from each bite. Like an alcoholic who needs to consume ever-larger quantities of liquor to achieve the same level of intoxication, individuals with “hypofunctioning reward circuits” are forced to eat bigger portions in search of the same level of satisfaction. It’s an addiction with diminishing returns.
Full WSJ article by Jonah Lehrer worth reading.
I thinking another key factor worth mentioning is a person’s metabolism. But I don’t know how that’s measured or why people have such widely varying rates of metabolism.
When The 7 Deadly Sins was written, almost nobody was obese. Food was so scarce that it was a sign of gluttony to over-eat food — a scarce resource many others lacked.
I watched a documentary about obesity treatments. I was amazed that Individuals who’ve had a lapband inserted still often fail unless they go through counseling. One area of research involves placing electrodes on the obese person’s outer stomach lining to relay the message of fullness to the brain once a person is sated.