Been thinking about the fat phobia struggle thread from a few days ago. Came across this video which gave a lot of “food for thought” about the systemic causes of obesity today. Food is engineered to be highly addictive, tweaking the interaction with all senses. Capitalism is a driving reason for the competition over our stomachs. This should occupy a larger part of standard leftist discourse due to its ubiquity and its ease of appearing natural and inoffensive.
Being addicted to meat and sugar really is just as powerful as any drug addiction for a lot of people and the fact that companies can just pump their food full of addictive chemicals is vile.
I can't explain how this happened but when I got covid in March 2020 I lost my dessert addiction overnight. If I eat desserts I still enjoy them like I used to, but I stopped craving them in the same way, I no longer think about desserts all the time. I had been really overweight and after about two years I lost seventy pounds with zero deliberate lifestyle changes.
I really think that a lot people who haven't experienced food addiction aren't able to imagine how real it can be for someone else. I can also say from experience that someone with a severe food addiction can see it as a personal failing because it's hard to imagine how much easier restraint is for the people who don't struggle with restraint.
I had an absolutely miserable time with post-covid symptoms, but losing my sugar addiction was definitely a silver lining.