[greggman3]

Is it true there are plenty of places in the world that don't have an epidemic of obesity?

My belief is Japan doesn't have as much of an obesity problem.

Sure, I'd love a drug that lets me eat more calories and not get fat but I'd also love it if we some how managed to stop eating so many cookies, donuts, potato-chips, sugary sodas, giant portion meals, etc.... I'd also love it if we designed more areas to be walkable and bikeable.

I lived ~15 years in Japan. I never missed owning car because the country is designed not to need a car. I also spent a year in Europe and Singapore and again, never missed owning car for the same reasons.

Let me also add that in Japan, at least in big cities like Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, you are almost always 1-2 minutes away from junk food. You can walk to a convenience store and find whole aisles of pastries, chips, ice cream, candies, etc and yet somehow the Japanese manage not to pig out.

Similarly there are bakeries all over full of donuts, etc...

Somethings that help are the portions are often smaller. Certainly for potato chips most bags in Japan are 1/3th the size of the average bag in the USA. Similarly cookies are small and come in small portions vs the USA where pretty much any supermarket sells cookies in packages of 20 to 40 cookies and each cookie is giant 300-500 calories each.

I guess this is one of those, we're not going to get people to stop eating too much so we have to find another solution? I can just imagine once I get this drug I'll start eating more because I can and companies will ramp up the portion sizes even more.... TACO TIME!!!!!

[waylandsmithers]

> Sure, I'd love a drug that lets me eat more calories and not get fat

I think the deal is that the drug suppresses your appetite so you do actually eat less