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We Won’t Solve The Obesity Crisis With Education

An Addict Knows They’re On The Wrong Path

Geoffrey Verity Schofield
4 min readAug 14, 2020

An obese person is not obese primarily due to a lack of education. I’ve heard this repeatedly over the past few years.

And it’s just not true.

“If only we could teach them about food choices.”

“If only they knew about the benefits of fiber.”

“If only they were taught to count calories.”

No. Let’s not kid ourselves with thinking this can be solved with pamphlets and prayers.

It’s systemic.

Photo by AllGo - An App For Plus Size People on Unsplash

An addict cannot be helped purely through education.

I don’t use the word addict lightly — studies show that sugar is more addictive than cocaine. It’s in over 60% of foods, added in to keep you on the drip. Modern food is quite literally engineered for addiction.

Education can’t overcome that.

I’ve worked with hundreds of people, many of them obese, some of them into the 60%+ body fat range. Every single one of them knew that vegetables were healthy, and that processed fast food was not.

Every single one.

They all also knew that being that fat — it’s not mean, it’s descriptive and realistic— was unhealthy.

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