Dorfington wrote:How healthy is the average Human in 2160? More specifically, do the better developed and richer nations still suffer from high rates in obesity, or has humanity effectively developed, introduced and maintained mandatory systems and programs into their societies to compensate for the decrease in vigorous labour and a surplus of high caloric foods found readily available to us in our own societies today? (Fast food joint's for example)
Would it be reasonable to assume that at some point, fast food chains and other big companies that aggressively advertise and sell unhealthy food items would be regulated more heavily 2160?
Basically a̶r̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶f̶a̶t̶ ̶c̶h̶i̶c̶k̶s̶ is there a high amount of obesity amongst those not working in sectors that require/involve regular exercise and dieting (The Military for example).
Also, has the larger population on Earth caused a strain on agriculture? Or has our ability to cultivate land for growing food advanced to be able to tolerate so many Humans.
Finally, what is food like in 2160? Does the common peasant eat soylent green and synth foods, whilst the elite enjoy the rare delicacy of naturally grown food items?
Outsider is a story about alien contact, in which the human character serves as the viewpoint character; he is us, and we need to intuitively understand his point of view. So it would counterproductive from a storytelling point of view to have him come from a horrific dystopian future Earth that we would not recognize; that's not what the story is about. So, for the most part, future Earth in Outsider looks very familiar.
Earth's governments are still divided into many different countries, each with different ideas about how to live, so there is no single answer to most of these questions. Due to the dangerous nature of high technology and the pressure of overpopulation, many governments will probably be slightly more authoritarian than what we're used to today, but I think the most successful and vibrant societies will tend to be those that value individual freedoms over group order. It's hard to imagine a government that enforces a proscribed diet and compulsory exercise regimens that doesn't look suspiciously like
IngSoc from
1984.
People become overweight when they eat too much and don't exercise enough. Diet and daily routine are personal lifestyle decisions that I don't think the government should have any say in. Fast food and the like don't make these decisions easier, but they are not responsible for obesity; there are plenty of overweight people who never eat fast food. One of the pitfalls of socialized medicine is that if you make it the government's job to pay for health care, then you're giving the government a very strong incentive to tell people how to live their lives. However, as the cost of ultra-tech medicine continues to rise exponentially as the population ages, I don't think socialized medicine is sustainable. At TL9, you can essentially live indefinitely as long as you can afford the increasingly expensive treatments; this is not something that any society can afford for all its citizens... unless they strictly limit the size of the population... and then we're talking about
Logan's Run style dystopia. And as a purely practical matter, I don't think you can change fundamental human behaviors through simple legislation. You have only to look at the failures of American Prohibition or the Chinese One Child Policy to see that even the most oppressive government has limited control over what humans choose to do with their own lives. Unless you really control people's minds, which brings us back to
1984.
All that said, I think obesity is something that any high-tech society will have to continually struggle with. I don't see any particular reason why humanity of 2160 should be more obese than the humans of today. People will still have to work, and some of that work will still involve some physical labor.
Larger populations put pressure on food supplies, but improved agricultural technology stays ahead. There is a limit, but I think there is a lot of room to improve; direct genetic manipulations are producing gains that will make the
Green Revolution seem trivial by comparison. There will be the same sorts of foods as are available today, along with new items that may either be exotic delicacies or cheap fodder. I think other resources such as energy and fresh water are probably of greater concern.
boldilocks wrote:More likely genetic engineering will have solved the issue some other way. As in, your genes will have been modified so that your body doesn't see the need to store a bunch of useless fat anymore.
Although gene therapy will be common as a treatment, I think outright genetic engineering of humans will probably still be illegal in most countries. So I don't think the fix is quite that simple.
Also, I'm not sure that particular modification would be a good idea. Fat reserves exist for a reason; a human species without the ability to survive interruptions in food supply is probably a species that won't survive for very long. Such changes would need to be done on an individual basis; I'm not sure any government has the authority to decide how humanity itself should change.