How long til we're all on Ozempic?

No amount of education will change who your parents were or how you were raised. Have you observed a strong correlation between how well educated someone is vs. obesity?

> I speculate that better awareness of diet/nutrition might help to prevent passing on such behaviours, like not feeding the family exclusively a bucket of KFC or McDonalds, or using food as a reward, etc. etc.

I'd encourage you to talk to any reasonably intelligent obese parent to see if they need better awareness of diet/nutrition. Better still, do a survey of obese and non-obese people to compare awareness of diet/nutrition between the two groups.

> I mean, medication won't actually solve what is caused by behaviour, right?

Saying that obesity is caused by behaviour and therefore can't be solved with medication is a bold statement to make in the context of a story about a drug that has been clinically proven to help obese people to lose weight.

Medication is often prescribed to help people who suffer from behavioural problems with positive results. I wouldn't presume medication can solve all problems caused by behaviour, but there is empirical evidence that for some problems it does help. As near as we can tell, human behaviour is regulated by a electrochemical brain & nervous system. Dumping chemicals into that system can of course change human behaviour. We see evidence of that (for better or for worse) all the time. If you have doubts and you don't even need to get a prescription, try taking a hit of acid/cocaine/alchohol and see if behaviour changes.

> If parents know their habits around food are basically ensuring their kids will struggle with obesity, maybe they'll make the effort to do something different?

The US has had a dramatic increase in obesity within a single generation (as in, people who were not obese for much of their lives have become morbidly obese at a rate far exceeding previous generations), let alone cross generational. While food/nutrition/health habits can certainly have a profound effect on someone's weight, there are clearly other factors at play.

Consider, for a moment, the reality of an obese person living in the US today. You get negative feedback about your weight all the time. You suffer negative social outcomes, let alone all the physical ones, so few, if any, want to be obese. There is no lack of motivation to seek out information on how to avoid being obese. There's a $300+ billion industry diet/health/nutrition industry constantly seeking to inform you about products they offer to help with your diet/health/nutrition... and that's not counting the doctors that you are no doubt interacting with regularly. Of course, that's not counting all the education (solicited or otherwise) you get from friends, family, acquaintances and even random strangers. It's hard to get through a day without being "educated" about diet, nutrition and health.

There's a cultural bias to think the problem is simply about behavioural/willpower/education, much the same way we look at poverty. It demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of and empathy for the plight of people who are suffering from obesity.

I strictly maintain my weight. If I catch it going over over 155# (I'm a 5'10" 61 year3 old male) I'll do a strict cut. And I know that either strictly counting calores OR going to as close to zero carbs will have the same net effect.

But a person who has obesity or is overweight will not be able to follow a diet. They are just incapable of doing so, or will lie to themselves or others about it and claim it's their "metabolism" or a medical condition, etc.

It seems clear enough to me that there is something - something - in the ecosystem that messes up the body's weight / energy homeostasis and we haven't identified the culprit. It might be a food additive, but it could be something to do with artificial light in the evening or plasticizers in our plastic products or who knows what.

Just my pov as non-overweight person who doesn't exercise (other than flipping my four year old around), doesn't walk or run long distances (but a 5 mile walk every couple of months doesn't phase me), eats very few fruits and vegetables, generally eats mostly meat, pasta, bread, cheese, cream and potatoes, and ends up in a fast food outlet maybe once a week on average.