Earlier quoted context omitted.
> our bodies don't just produce more GLP-1 Dominant subgroups in a species are dominant because their parents survived that last set of pressures (external death inducements) at a higher rate than other subgroups -- but won't necessarily see the same results with the current set. Even 90 years ago, there was significant loss of life due to famine, so selection was towards people who could efficiently gain and store c…
> but good quality food is expensive (in the US -- many other parts of the world have their quality food cheaper but I digress Let's digress. I read this frequently in various forms on this forum, and it's always "just so" justification. My own heuristic thought is that "low quality" food (high energy, long shelf-life processed foods) is very cheap because it is produced at scale and can be stored, while "high qualit…
Having lived in a few other countries with less industrialized distribution networks, no, this claim is dramatically incorrect. Fruits, vegetables, staples like rice, and basic forms of protein (fish, insects and sea critters, some chicken) are much, much cheaper relative to processed foods. Larger protein sources like beef, pork, or bushmeat is relatively more expensive, however, unless you opt for poor quality processing like cheap "corned beef" made from offal.
As an economist, I appreciate the difficulty of making apples-to-apples comparisons across countries for things like food prices, as even the acclaimed "Big Mac Index" assumes that a Big Mac has a similar relative status across countries (though the oft-misunderstood intent of the Big Mac Index is to more to compare consistent production costs). In some places a Big Mac is fancy, in the US it is considered fairly garbage but consistent.
For example, in a market in the Philippines, you have mostly cash transactions and informal capture for what the majority of people purchase. The purchasing is done more in these almost farmers-market style transfer versus grocery stores in the US. They _do_ have grocery stories, but almost uniformly for processed food distribution versus fresh food in the markets. It's much cheaper to eat healthier from the markets and through the informal distribution network of sari-sari stores versus equivalent nutrition from processed food from the grocery stores.
Also, consider the results of this recent study: https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/08/in-trial-people-lost-...