I appreciate and understand your response. Before you wrote this, I would’ve assumed people from your part of the world would be pretty happy with how your countries handle public health issues in general, because all the data I’m aware of indicates that whatever you are doing is working better than what we are doing. Admittedly I haven’t seen recent obesity numbers though. And now I’m seeing the cost that measures like you described can have, and it’s probably not even fair to assume those measures deserve credit for the relative skinniness of Scandinavia. I gotta admit it is tempting to think your society is as close to utopia as exists, but there’s clearly a lot I don’t know.

In America, I think the shame and hate against fat people is often more… subtle? I say that because I had multiple doctors say literally nothing about my weight when I know they should’ve, and I’m getting a lot of indicators from my rural family and friends that they don’t get much of that feedback either. I think in America, most fat people just look around and see media representations of very skinny attractive people and feel bad. Some of us don’t get a lot of direct criticism (constructive or otherwise), to the point that I find it harmful. I’m not sure how to strike the right balance there.