The Obesity Confusion Pyramid drives bad decisions and our kids pay for it

As a physicist, I’ve learned that if you don’t know the main root cause(s) of the problem, two things are likely to happen:

1. You’re very unlikely to find an optimal solution to the problem
2. Confusion opens up opportunities for bad solutions (and profiting from them)

The U.S. obesity epidemic with nearly 100 Million obese American adults is, sadly, a wonderful example of this type of situation.

As the co-founder and CEO of Virta Health, I’ve had the pleasure of having conversations with many obesity experts over the last 8 yeras trying to explain our obesity epidemic and its root cause(s). One thing is clear, utter confusion about the root cause of obesity prevails even among these expert scientists and clinicians. The more precisely you start to pin point the root cause(s) of obesity, the fewer experts agree with you. In fact, the only way to agree with 100% of the experts is to even disagree whether there’s a true problem with obesity at all.

To illustrate my observations, I’ve drawn the “Obesity Confusion Pyramid” below.

Obesity Confusion Pyramid: my take on obesity experts’ consensus of root cause(s) — utter confusion prevails.

Negative Consequences are Severe

The most likely right answer to the root cause of obesity is somewhere there in the above pyramid, but based on all the available evidence, it’s not the entire pyramid or the very top of it.

This confusion, sadly, is highly consequential for the following reasons:

1. The economic cost and human suffering due to obesity is sky-rocketing and only going up.
2. Our kids — and there are now obese kids with the recommended solution being drugs and weight loss surgery (!) — are paying the price of our inability to understand this problem with their health (and possiblylives). (adults too, of course)
3. Confusion allows for sub-optimal solutions to be promoted as viable options to obesity. Many companies benefit from the confusion economically and otherwise.
4. Worst of all, those responsible for our obesity epidemic get a free pass and can continue maintaining or worsening the situation and potentially profiting from it.

But is this the best we can do in 2023? What is the most likely root cause of our obesity epidemic? And if so, what are the optimal solutions? I’ll share my thoughts about that in the next write up soon.
(feel free to guess below in the comments)