The Orwellian Efficiency of a "Being Fat" Tax
(Digital Vision) The Danish policymakers who implemented the world’s first “fat tax” last week are remarkable not for their directness in addressing the growing Western challenge of obesity, but for…
(Digital Vision) The Danish policymakers who implemented the world’s first “fat tax” last week are remarkable not for their directness in addressing the growing Western challenge of obesity, but for…
An obesity crisis is upon us and the solutions have proven to be stubborn. The most popular policy proposals have been rooted in the assumption that humans will make self-interested…
…obesity doubled over a decade, signaling the rising prevalence of excess weight and the toll it is taking on the health-care system. The medical costs of obesity were estimated to…
(Photo: Conor Lawless) Our recent Freakonomics Radio podcast “100 Ways to Fight Obesity” looked at some of the social costs of America’s increasing rate of obesity. One airline in Samoa…
…obesity-related diseases would rise by 13-16%, leading to 2.6% increase in national health spending In the U.K.: Prevalence of obesity among men would increase from 26% to between 41 —…
[omny:https://traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/aaea4e69-af51-495e-afc9-a9760146922b/14a43378-edb2-49be-8511-ab0d000a7030/1e7bf4da-4a5e-48bf-9b95-ab0d001c099a/audio.mp3] (Photo: Ingo Bernhardt) We seem to be in the midst of a national obsession with obesity. Our latest Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace podcast is about some of the surprising…
How much control do you really have over your body? Could understanding genetics help combat fat-shaming? And why is Mike’s life coach so happy all the time?…
Celebrity chef Alex Guarnaschelli joins us to co-host an evening of delicious fact-finding: where a trillion oysters went, whether a soda tax can work, and how beer helped build an…
Read the Column » Still-Photo Gallery Self-Experimentation as a Source of New Ideas: Ten Examples About Sleep, Mood, Health, and Weight By Seth Roberts What Makes Food Fattening: A Pavlovian…
…advanced by economists here and elsewhere. Now it also seems that the federal farm program blamed for worsening obesity has actually kept us skinnier. That is the finding of agricultural…
…The maps demonstrate that “Polynesia aside, obesity was a rich-world phenomenon in 1980. By 2008 the rich world had itself expanded, bringing obesity to groups within countries that were previously…
For all the progress made in fighting cancer, it still kills 10 million people a year, and some types remain especially hard to detect and treat. Pancreatic cancer, for instance,…
…our host took us to a gas station for a fried fast food breakfast and coffee from a vending machine. Q: Which country has obesity issues comparable to the U.S….
…as follows: The death toll from obesity is less than a third of the government’s previous estimate, researchers are reporting today, contradicting warnings that poor diet and physical inactivity are…
Photo: ElvertBarnes Americans are fat. The latest obesity estimates reach as high as 30% of the population; and the future looks worse. There’s been much hand wringing over the years,…
…anyone here who is trying to fight obesity. Another issue to explore further might be whether obesity has a large cost for a woman when she is unmarried, but less…
One woman’s quest to find the best burger in town can teach all of us to eat smarter.
…would be: “tackling childhood obesity, ‘making America a tobacco-free nation’ and improving the ability of the Public Health Service to respond to emergencies.” While these priorities are certainly in sync…
…uncovered a link between the grocery gap and rising obesity, the Los Angeles Times reports. The study found that neighborhoods with dramatically more fast-food restaurants and convenience stores than supermarkets…
(Digital Vision) We’ve been writing a lot about obesity recently. First, it was this study about projected future obesity rates, then we covered Denmark’s saturated fat tax, which Steve Sexton…
…though it’s unclear — it’s been a raging success. Stockholm has seen rising obesity rates, especially among young girls, and has tried some other anti-obesity nudges as well. How will…
…per 100,000 people increases the obesity rate by 2.3 percentage points. They concluded that the proliferation of Walmart Supercenters may explain 10.5% of the rise in the obesity rate since…
The American Beverage Association has just announced its recommendation that elementary schools no longer sell soda pop in vending machines. “Childhood obesity is a real problem,” ABA president and CEO…
About 9 percent of health-care costs are directly attributable to obesity, which led Dubner to wonder if we should assess a fat tax (on fat food, that is, not people)…
…York’s health department: “Calorie posting in and of itself is not going to change obesity per se, but it’s all of these kinds of layering opportunities that we’re doing for…
…consumption, others have shown soda taxes to be ineffective at reducing obesity rates. Proof, McWilliams argues, that taxing specific food items is ultimately ineffective, since consumers can simply substitute sugar…
The revolution in home DNA testing is giving consumers important, possibly life-changing information. It’s also building a gigantic database that could lead to medical breakthroughs. But how will you deal…
Five years ago, we published an episode about the boom in home DNA testing kits, focusing on the high-flying firm 23andMe and its C.E.O. Anne Wojcicki. Their flight has been…
…to their body mass index (obesity); 3) 5 the willingness of individuals to engage in stable relationships (the marriage rate). In line with the theoretical prediction by Davis (1988), we…
Obesity linked to higher cancer risks. (Earlier) The Wii continues to dominate the industry. (Earlier) Is human sexuality an “evolutionary arms race”? How should corporations approach philanthropy? Becker and Posner…
