it's overdue that science steps in and makes this point.
Please don't sully the term 'science' by association with this drivel.
Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
41–50 of 67 posts
Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obesity is 100% calories in/calories out. Good thing I'm at a startup trying to help people eat healthy and in reasonable portions without feeling unduly hungry.
Sarcasm ? I mean I'm not saying that people crying about genetics and how they can't help it aren't just wining but AFAIK it matters very much what kind your diet consists of and how physically fit you are ie. carbs, insulin sensitivity and muscle mass are crucial factors, calories in/out seem waay to simplistic.
I'm 100% serious, the deviation between the highest and lowest metabolisms save for people with specific conditions like hypothyroidism is not a significant contributor to obesity.
Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sarcasm ? I mean I'm not saying that people crying about genetics and how they can't help it aren't just wining but AFAIK it matters very much what kind your diet consists of and how physically fit you are ie. carbs, insulin sensitivity and muscle mass are crucial factors, calories in/out seem waay to simplistic.
It is too simplistic - the human body has all sorts of hystereses in it, and doesn't work on a linear scale with calories. That being said, improving diet and using appropriate quantities is a fairly common solution - if people can stick to it, they'll generally be better off.
If you eat less than you burn, you will lose weight.
The tricky part is in making it easier to eat less than you burn.
Eating healthier food that better sates you inside some kind of structure will help you accomplish that.
Our product will solve all of those problems as well as take the pain out of meal planning even for people not trying to necessarily lose weight.
Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
#44Paying by the kg, whether kg of flesh/fat or kg of luggage, wouldn't be absurd. The kg of fat might be a bit cheaper, though: you need luggage crew to haul luggage, but most haul themselves autonomously. A reason to impose penalty on luggage weight is that it affects what people bring aboard: penalties might entice you to leave some luggage at home; they won't entice you to leave your rolls of fat on the ground. But…
More than that: the airlines charge what they think people will pay. There's no reason to suppose that heavier people are willing to pay more than lighter people are (beyond children being light and poor).
Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obesity is 100% calories in/calories out. Good thing I'm at a startup trying to help people eat healthy and in reasonable portions without feeling unduly hungry.
Do you have any info on your startup? I'm way, way overweight (somewhere around 380lbs) and currently attempting to get myself into a healthy lifestyle. Anything that makes that easier would definitely get my money.
I know you from your previous work, I'll be contacting you when we're ready for beta users outside of our original alpha cohort.
Other people: keep my username bookmarked for future updates, I'll be posting the product on HN once we're ready for more publicity.
Good luck on your weight loss whether you end up a user of our product or not.
Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
There is a lot of evidence that obesity is not hereditary/predetermined, but is a choice (or a consequence of a weak mind/bad incentives). I was in Vietnam 5 years ago. I didn't see any fat people. Look at photos/documentaries of Africa. No fat people. To take it to the extreme, there were no fat people in Auschwitz. That is not to say that it was good in any way and that people should starve, but just that it is not…
Obesity is 100% calories in/calories out. Good thing I'm at a startup trying to help people eat healthy and in reasonable portions without feeling unduly hungry.
You fail to account for the variables involved in "calories out".
Metabolism is controlled in a large way by hormones. For example, extremely undernourished people will slow their metabolism way down in order to preserve what fat reserves are left. A diet that significantly increases blood sugar will, in many people, cause a high insulin response and cause fat to be stored and only glucose to be burned.
Essentially you're looking at this from the wrong way. For the body to grow in any manner, hormones are required (c.f. growth hormones during puberty). And for the body to have grown, excess calories must have been consumed. What forces people to eat so many calories that they grow in size is triggered by their hormones generally telling them that they are starving, even if they are not. See Metabolic Syndrome, Diabetes, Insulin Resistance, etc.
So yes, calories in/calories out, but you're not even considering _why_ those calories were consumed in the first place.
Disclaimer: I've been eating Low-Carb/High-Fat diet that brought my steadily worsening weight issue to a much more healthy level (91kg to 75kg) through control of my blood sugar and appetite.
Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
#47Should we charge more for disabled people? Does any additional cost to a company mean that it can treat its customers differently? We must have a society where the equality of people is incontrovertible, and we make accommodations for the fact. That a thin small woman weighing 50Kg is worth the same as a muscular or fat person weighing 100kg. To ask one to pay more for a service because of what they are is unequal tr…
This is a good point, but surely you will agree that we can only discuss where to draw the line, not whether it should be drawn or not?
As said in another post, life is not fair. If we take your point to the extreme, society should even out the disadvantages that come from having below-average intelligence.
Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
>As a tall man, I hate this stupid point. I can't help the fact that I'm tall. I'm perhaps 10-15kg overweight, but if I go below 110kg, I am unhealthy. I already have to pay more to get a seat that doesn't screw me up - a seat that still doesn't fit me properly. Meanwhile Ms Slight Asian Woman is getting a much more comfortable seat. She's getting a better service for the same price. Well even you admit that you requ…
I think you missed my point. I am paying extra for a bulkhead seat that still does not fit me as well as a standard seat for the 'light person' - I get a worse service for more money. Then the guy in the article says I should pay even more, simply to appease his sense of misplaced righteousness.
I think you put it nicely - you think you're buying a service, this guy is arguing you're buying weight transfer, I would say you're buying seats, and whatever model makes the most sense should be used by the airline company.
Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sarcasm ? I mean I'm not saying that people crying about genetics and how they can't help it aren't just wining but AFAIK it matters very much what kind your diet consists of and how physically fit you are ie. carbs, insulin sensitivity and muscle mass are crucial factors, calories in/out seem waay to simplistic.
I'm 100% serious, the deviation between the highest and lowest metabolisms save for people with specific conditions like hypothyroidism is not a significant contributor to obesity.
What about insulin sensitivity and different sources of calories. Surely you aren't suggesting that eating a 1k calories of pure protein, pure carbs or pure fat is the same ? Even proiten/carbs/fat branch and have different effects on the metabolism and are required in different amounts for a balanced diet to achieve some desired effect. What about muscle mass vs fat tissue, they burn calories at different rates and require different kind of food to build.
Calories in/out is just extreme oversimplification that doesn't help in the slightest and causes people to starve themselves needlessly because of bad intuition, also risking their health and ultimately achieving the opposite of the desired effect.
Re: Weigh more, pay more: Argument for charging obese people higher flying fares
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
Obesity is 100% calories in/calories out. Good thing I'm at a startup trying to help people eat healthy and in reasonable portions without feeling unduly hungry.
You fail to account for the variables involved in "calories out". Metabolism is controlled in a large way by hormones. For example, extremely undernourished people will slow their metabolism way down in order to preserve what fat reserves are left. A diet that significantly increases blood sugar will, in many people, cause a high insulin response and cause fat to be stored and only glucose to be burned. Essentially y…
>You fail to account for the variables involved in "calories out".
The study didn't fail to do so, so therefore I didn't.
>Metabolism is controlled in a large way by hormones. For example, extremely undernourished people will slow their metabolism way down in order to preserve what fat reserves are left.
This is a myth as far as western society is concerned. No one in western society not near-death from anorexia needs to concern themselves with this.
http://www.weightwatchers.com/util/art/index_art.aspx?tabnum...
> What forces people to eat so many calories that they grow in size is triggered by their hormones generally telling them that they are starving, even if they are not.
This is not true, you've been reading too much keto literature on leptin.
I say this as someone who is a proponent of low-carb diets as a way of promoting satiety and controlling caloric intake.
>So yes, calories in/calories out, but you're not even considering _why_ those calories were consumed in the first place.
I have a whole team of nutritionists working with us, as well as my own personal experience and research, I've gathered quite a bit of experience.
Let me lay out a few things for you.
Low-carb works, anecdotally (key modifier here), because it happens to push people into eating almost no empty calories. In a diet simply absent bread, sugar, and other empty calories, virtually everything you eat is contributing your satiety as well as your overall health.
That alone will allow you to eat far less and feel fuller. Taking it that much further and saying that the entire leptin hypothesis along with the keto diet usually associated with it is somehow responsible for weight-loss when that loss could be explained purely in terms of eating healthier in general, is unscientific and unproven.
Control for people who don't eat empty/junk calories versus people who stay strictly keto, and we'll have a better idea of what impact blood sugar and leptin have on the matter.
I don't deny that insulin resistance has a long-term impact on health, but I sincerely doubt it has much, if anything, to do with short-term weight loss.