Reply #10: Even without considering

[SheilaT]

the fast food industry, or high-fructose corn syrup, we are surrounded by food. As a friend who struggled with obesity said to me about twenty years ago, the problem is, unlike cigarettes, you can't just give up food forever.

And that, I think, is an important point. As addictive as cigarettes are, as much pleasure as many smokers get from them, every current and ex smoker knows that you CAN give up cigarettes forever and you won't die or suffer truly terrible consequences. (And I'm trying, as someone who never smoked, to by sympathetic and understanding of the difficulties of giving up smoking.) But you must eat to live.

I've also several times read that some researchers are beginning to believe that there may be some kind of viral connection to the surge in obesity. And before everyone starts simply dumping on the obese for being weak-willed or whatever, keep in mind that for many years certain kinds of ulcers were considered to be caused by stress, until a patient researcher discovered the bacteria that causes those ulcers.