We learned an important lesson about willpower and biology 50 years ago when American soldiers returned from Vietnam. About 20 percent of them were addicted to heroin or opium, but 88 percent of these soldiers quit these powerfully addictive drugs without issue once they were back in America.
The lesson: Your environment matters.
If you're surrounded by death, destruction, and have easy access to drugs, you're more likely to use drugs. If you're in a safe place with people who love you and who don't use drugs, you aren't nearly as likely to use drugs.
Americans are facing an environment that makes it hard to stay slim and easy to gain weight, including cultural and biochemical factors that undermine our willpower and compromise our biology.
There are the obvious obesity assailants, like high-calorie foods that trigger a biochemical reaction that mimics addiction, and dopamine-triggering apps and services that keep us glued to our ever-expanding backsides. There is also stress, which leads to terrible dietary decisions, and a fat-inducing lack of sleep.
But there are less obvious assailants, like common drugs that appear to contribute to obesity, including antidepressants and birth control.
Other drugs undermine our self-control.
Research links fluoride and prenatal and postnatal acetaminophen use to developmental delays and attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder. Some food dyes are also linked to hyperactivity. These conditions undermine impulse control, a real problem for people being beckoned to eat compulsion-forming foods from every aisle and intersection.
We've also got modern toxins in our food and household items called "obesogens" because they trigger biochemical changes in our bodies that make us fat.
If we overlook all this and say we're fat from "biology" or because we simply lack willpower, we ignore a crucial reality: Americans are the fattest people in the developed world for several reasons. They don't have different bodies or weaker wills than everyone else.
We still don't know how these new diet drugs work, or their long-term side effects. To suggest the best way to resolve obesity is a pill that will only help you lose a limited amount of weight—and only if you keep taking it, is a dangerously narrow approach.
We can each take individual steps to strengthen ourselves, bolster our willpower, and lose weight. And among those steps is changing our environment. Our best hope to resolve America's obesity crisis isn't a pill, it's a healthier, cleaner culture.
A little nutrition education wouldn't hurt either.
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