The Economics of Obesity: A Q&A With the Author of The Fattening of America
…don’t like to exercise, we are bound to see obesity rates go up. Q: Is obesity really an “epidemic”? If we were to let the current obesity rates continue unchecked,…
…don’t like to exercise, we are bound to see obesity rates go up. Q: Is obesity really an “epidemic”? If we were to let the current obesity rates continue unchecked,…
…others suffer from scores of “obesity related” diseases. Obesity has been blamed for everything from dragging down the economy to global warming. Most recently, we’ve heard that obesity is “contagious.”…
Freakonomics asks a dozen smart people for their best ideas. Get ready for a fat tax, a sugar ban, and a calorie-chomping tapeworm.
…I sometimes divide the obesity issue into three questions. 1. Why has the U.S. obesity rate risen so much? Many, many answers to this question have been offered, most of…
Americans keep putting on pounds. So is it time for a cheeseburger tax? Or would a chill pill be the best medicine? In this episode, we explore the underbelly of…
(Photo: davidd) We’ve blogged before about the obesity epidemic, and whether or not it is a recent phenomenon; John Komlos and Marek Brabec have argued that obesity rates actually began…
…it. Publishers Weekly describes it as follows: It’s not obesity, but the panic over obesity, that’s the real health problem, argues this scintillating contrarian study of the evergreen subject of…
…how obesity is measured, etc. It has even led to the suggestion that higher oil prices may help curtail U.S. obesity. Now here is a new working paper called “Why…
…in some cases more sensitive to the prices just mentioned than BMI. For more on the causes and consequences of youth obesity, see our podcast “100 Ways to Fight Obesity.”…
…Disease Control (CDC) shows obesity rates dropping for low-income preschool children in 19 states between 2008 and 2011. From the Wall Street Journal: The obesity analysis, by the federal Centers…
…obesity above 30 percent — Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi,” said Dr. William Dietz, director of nutrition, physical activity, and obesity at the CDC. “Now, there are nine states that exceed…
Our recent podcast on obesity has generated a lot of e-mail. (FWIW, one of the very first podcasts we ever did was also about obesity.) Here’s one interesting angle, from…
(Photo: Sean Winters) RAND reports on a healthy eating dilemma: Is eating more fruits and vegetables the key to reducing obesity? A recent RAND study of more than 2,700 adults…
(iStockphoto) Is higher obesity due to the rise in driving? Perhaps. It’s an intriguing hypothesis. But our friends at The Economist should know better than to report nonsensical correlations. Here’s…
The obesity epidemic is generally portrayed as a relatively recent phenomenon, but new research paints a different picture. John Komlos and Marek Brabec find (gated version here) that obesity rates…
One of the first Freakonomics Radio podcasts we made was an episode about the (surprisingly tenuous) link between obesity and health problems. A new study in The Journal of the…
…health budget being spent on treating diabetes and its complications, which can include blindness and amputations. … However, Tam Fry, of the National Obesity Forum, said: “There is a mismatch…
Here’s one way to fight obesity: mandatory exercise, as Beijing has commanded again, after a three-year break. “The short-term goal is to involve 60% of the workforces in Beijing by…
People are significantly fatter in countries, states, and cities where car use is more common. Mass transit use, on the other hand, is correlated with lower obesity. But there has…
…people appear to have, the authors explained. More here. I have to say, if you were to catalog all the explanations given for obesity in scholarly journals and elsewhere, it…
French diet guru Pierre Dukan is urging his government to give extra marks in school for a healthy BMI. The Telegraph reports: “Obesity is a real public health problem that…
Obesity — its causes and consequences — is a frequent topic on this blog (and the podcast too). In the podcast, Eric Oliver argued that “the causal relationship between weight…
…high-calorie items. A few days later, the Times published an article on the subject. It struck me that this new regulation presents a great opportunity for obesity researchers. If you…
Economics is sometimes ridiculed as a science that uses complex math to argue the obvious. That complaint may be valid toward the following paper, but it’s still interesting (to me…
(Photo: Nicolas Nova) Last year, Google realized that its employees were eating too much free candy — M&Ms, specifically. So the company conducted a little experiment, and carefully tracked the…
Photo: edenpictures That’s the question posed in a new working paper by Patricia M. Anderson, Kristin F. Butcher, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. What would the mechanism/s be? “Schools facing increased…
Some people argue that sugar should be regulated, like alcohol and tobacco, on the grounds that it’s addictive and toxic. How much sense does that make? We hear from a…
Some people argue that sugar should be regulated, like alcohol and tobacco, on the grounds that it’s addictive and toxic. How much sense does that make? We hear from a…
…recent obesity paper, from Charles Courtemanche, Garth Heutel, and Patrick McAlvanah, called “Impatience, Incentives, and Obesity” (abstract here; PDF here): This paper explores the relationship between time preferences, economic incentives,…
…fact that there’s also a very good possibility that obesity has relatively little to do with food choice. When we talk about solving the problem of obesity, we’re talking, in…
