I don’t like victim mentality either, but I knew a very large man who would have a (admittedly not sugar free) yogurt cup, a hard boiled egg, a can of v-8, and 2 pieces of toasted white bread for breakfast and dinner, and for lunch a diet soda, and a single entree from the company cafeteria (took the fruit option instead of chips and side salads with no bacon or croutons or any of that stuff, with light vinegrette dressing. This was his diet while trying to win the ‘biggest loser’ betting pool, but he continued it after winning because he didn’t want to die of a heart attack. He went from 300-something, down to 250, but could not get any lower. He used the stairs, walked to the store if it was a mile away or less, went cycling with me once a week, constantly talked about how much his life had improved with the new lifestyle, but he could not drop below about 250. There is a definitive genetic factor for some people. Not for everyone (my weight has always been pretty much linearly correlated to my exercise and caloric intake), but there are some people who can’t help but be fat.

Of course your point is granted. It is the change in people’s expectation of how many calories they are supposed to consume in a day that has caused the rise in obesity. The part of the victim mentality that I do buy is that these people are put into an environment where the influences they receive from their culture about the expected eating lifestyle is exactly what they are doing. 9/10ths of the grocery market is filled with soda, frozen tater tots, fish sticks, rice-a-roni, taco bell brand refried beans, ground beef that costs twice as much to get the 95% fat free as to get the 80% fat free version, great big one pound blocks of cheddar cheese, and almost an entire row in the frozen foods department devoted to various ice creams. And then one row of produce. And then they go through their rushed lives, where both parents work and culture tells you your evenings should include a couple hours of tv a day. And people are surprised when people gain weight.

Back when America was thinner, the idea of going out to eat was thought of as ridiculous! The cost of eating out, compared to eating in was a lot larger, and a lot larger portion of people’s salaries (working at a restaurant was not a minimum wage job, and the burgers, buns and fries did not come predelivered to the restaurant in giant frozen containers, the buns where made from ingredients inside the restaurant). Fast foods didn’t have nearly the advertising budgets that they do now. Likewise, many to most families had a non-working, or semi-non-working parent at home to make dinners from scratch. Dinner could be made from ingredients, not as frozen dinners and store bought bread.

So it’s kind of a sociological question: Is living in a culture where the expected norm is unrealistic towards living a healthy lifestyle a form of victimhood to those people who live in the culture, and are influenced by it to live unhealthy lives?

It’s easy to say, “no,” but I’m sure that that is consistent with other beliefs we have. When the housing bubble collapsed, a bunch of people made comments like, “well, it’s their own fault if they get forclosed on! They shouldn’t have bought a house they couldn’t afford!” But then there was an immediate backlash saying, “Look, during the bubble everyone was told by every thing they hear and see that buying a home was the smartest investment they could make. Talk to your realtor, he’ll find you a home that you can afford! And people went out and talked to their realtor, and trusted the realtor’s appraisal of what they could afford (we all defer to authority sometimes in our lives, I trust my accountant when he says that I’ve paid my taxes correctly). Then when the housing bubble collapsed, people started selectively blaming the people who bought during the bubble and not anyone else in the long chain of decision makers who contributed to this catastrophe, many of whom were much more educated about financial risk than the home buyers.”

That’s the argument. As a culture, we haven’t really decided which argument to buy in the home buyer issue, yet it seems pretty much most of the culture seems to have made a decision on where the fault lies with obesity. I guess I just wish that we as a society were more consistent (even if that means we are consistently split). I just don’t see how the above argument can be so socially divided for one situation but almost caategorically lopsided in response to the other situation.