Fair enough - we'll have to agree to disagree. I think we should be free to make our own choices in life, and the only way for that to work is if we accept that people have to be responsible for their own actions.
For me, it doesn't work.
Because we surely must both accept that;
1.> The food industry directly seeks out and targets children, (the root cause)
2.> Children are more susceptible to the types of advertising than adults, because children are more impressionable and lack experience, they can be more easily exploited.
3.> Once children get a 'taste' for bad food, they're more likely to become obese, and even addicted, the die is cast - they carry that behaviour into adulthood - now you have a population of obese adults
If you accept those three points (which are pretty clear) it seems hard to accept, when people point the finger and say 'tut, tut - it's all your fault' when clearly there are far bigger forces and vast sums of money at play from the start.
Lack of willpower to stay healthy is exactly what it is. It's a lot easier to sit on the sofa eating takeaways than doing exercise and preparing fresh wholesome food.
Try looking at the problem differently, and ask 'why should I even
need willpower' ?
As an animal, you're not supposed to have willpower to turn down food, it makes no sense from a biological perspective to walk away from rich, sweet food. Indeed - there are literally no metabolic pathways or hormonal pathways which exist in the body which will cause someone to be repulsed, or turn their nose up at energy dense food. Because from an evolutionary perspective - it makes no sense that we'd evolve a sense of self control for us to turn down food, because we evolved at times when food was scarce.
I spent about 10 years as a wildlife photographer, when you watch animals eat - they have their fill, whether it's lions on a carcass or fish feeding - they all eat until they're absolutely stuffed, and even when they're stuffed they find ways to store it, or save it. Because in their environment, that's how you stay alive, and it was the same for humans up until a few thousand years ago.
Now drop somebody into today's environment, which is absolutely saturated with infinite amounts of sweet, rich, food - with no metabolic, or hormonal pathways present which prevent them from overeating, relying on willpower for the majority is never going to be enough, because willpower is weak compared to the mechanisms the body has evolved, which override almost any sense of self control.
