this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2023
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Precarious finances: 38% of Europeans no longer eat three meals a day (www.euronews.com)
submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Downvoting just proves you have no answer to the question.

The answer is simple: Humans are neither omniscient nor perfectly rational.

Obviously, humans who always make the perfect choice to optimize their long term health won't get obese just because empty calories are cheap. But if a typical human had such superhuman willpower and intellect, poverty wouldn't exist anyway and humanity would be occupied with putting up a dyson sphere around Vega or whatever.

In reality however humans are flawed and practically all will make stupid choices if the right ones are harder. Hence we need to create systems that make it easier to chose wisely. Because as individuals that's not something we're capable of.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sure. I agree with all that.

I don't agree with labelling something "hunger" which is not hunger in the way ordinary folks understand it. You are talking about addiction. Hunger is the thin end of the wedge for starvation and famine. That is a thing in the world, still. It has all but nothing to do with the West's inequality-fuelled addiction problems, or at least is something very, very different.

I just wish we would use language more correctly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I think that’s a sophisticated re-rendering, and that most ordinary folks do associate the word “hunger” with famine, with starving, with terrible deprivation.

I don't think the definition is that narrow. There's definitions like this:

a compelling need or desire for food. the painful sensation or state of weakness caused by the need of food: to collapse from hunger. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/hunger

  • a craving or urgent need for food or a specific nutrient
  • an uneasy sensation occasioned by the lack of food weakened condition brought about by prolonged lack of food

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hunger

It's indeed often used to describe more dire situations around a lack of food, but it's not exclusively used for those situations. Hunger is also the corresponding noun to "feeling hungry". Hungriness isn't used that often.