This article seems to be to be strong justification for policies to keep people from getting overweight to begin with. I know for example, there have been battles in school districts to get rid of flavored milk and such.
I really would love to see better foods in schools. It's largely a captive audience. If we could reduce the number of people who leave high school overweight, even if by just a small number, it would probably have pretty decent long-term benefits.
And likewise better college programs. For example, at my college, if there was a "good health" program I could have easily signed up for, which included aerobic/weight training and meals there's a good chance I would have done it.
> strong justification for policies to keep people from getting overweight to begin with
Thinking that legislation is the solution to everything is part of so many problem in the US. You can't stop fat gain with laws any more than stopping people from driving over the posted speed limits on highways (which are government legislated and policed).
Education and free market effects are the only real and long-term solutions to these and other problems.
Educate people and they will vote with their actions. Food quality will improve overnight if Walmart shoppers stop buying everything with corn syrup and a myriad of unrecognizable chemical cocktails added for flavor, looks, preservation, whatever.
Finally, one needs to recognize that a certain percentage of the population will be fat no-matter what. I don't know what that number might be, but the key point is to face the reality that one can't fix every life. It's an individual choice.
If health insurance costs were paid directly by the policy holder and the market was free and open across state lines you might just see insurance policies that say things like "if your body fat content is over 20% your deductible increases by 100%, if it's over 33% your coverage is cut in half." or some such thing.
People react immediately to things that affect them directly. This sort of a free market approach is proven to motivate people to change behaviors. Your automobile insurance gets more expensive if you accumulate speeding tickets, therefore you slow down.
Keep government out of it. Almost everything they touch turns into an ugly mess.
That would be a far more compelling argument if it wasn't for the fact that in large part it's been government regulations and policies which have gotten us into this mess. Not solely, but in part.
Promoting large-scale agricultural activities, especially corn, potatoes, soybeans, and as a result CAFO beef, HFCS, and fa[s]t foods, largely an outgrowth of President Nixon's 1970s agricultural policies, have greatly re-shaped the American food landscape.
Industrialization of other parts of the food industry, particularly as pertains to processed/prepared foods, has done more. Regulations pertaining to such operations (including centralized inspection of meat processing plants, say) squeeze out small operators. Efficient, perhaps, but not healthful.
Liberating food processors from the consequences of their actions (allowing economic externalities in the form of negative health consequences) is a large part of problem.
Likewise institutional food policies at schools, through low-income food support (read up on Roger Lustig and WIC-provided OJ in his anti-fructose rants), universities, chain restaurants (you know, of course, that Michael Dell is a major shareholder of Applebees and IHOP), university, hospital, and military systems.
Toss in some really piss-poor science (Ancel Keys "lipid hypothesis") and, yes, some horribly broken policy. There's a lot government could do to fix things.
Keep government out of it. Almost everything they touch turns into an ugly mess.
Amen to that. Especially considering how closely the obesity "epidemic" correlates to government recommendations on what to eat (namely the "food pyramid").
>Thinking that legislation is the solution to everything is part of so many problem in the US. You can't stop fat gain with laws any more than stopping people from driving over the posted speed limits on highways (which are government legislated and policed).
Okay, let's do an experiment. We have two cafeterias, and randomly assign students to one or the other. In one we serve the standard fare, and the other 'healthy fare.' Assume we agree on what's healthy, and that it prevents obesity for most.
Do you think the kind of food available has no effect on obesity rates? Will the obesity (and diabetes) rates be equal between these two groups of students?
Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. I can't see how not giving kids the choice of eating junk food will lead to worse outcomes. They aren't going to go home and say, "OMG, I gotta make up for all the junk food I didn't eat at school now!"
I think increased deductible for the obese is a fine idea. But if that would work, so would a high tax on sugar (eg 0.5-1+ cents per gram), if indeed sugar is in part to blame for obesity as I believe. The benefit of a sugar tax is that it is felt before the person has gotten fat. The disadvantage is that even the slim and healthy must pay it. Even so, in a proper diet, sugar consumption should be well under 50g/day, more like <20g/day.
There are no nutrition labels on alcohol. On wine bottles, basic facts like the sugar concentration and the specific blend of grapes is often omitted, subject to local laws.
People often don't care enough to even get to the point where they can educate themselves. It's a bit of a chicken and an egg problem - if manufacturers don't disclose the information, consumers will never hear it, and will never ask for it in large numbers. Mandatory disclosure via government regulation solves that "information asymmetry." Once it's on the label, consumers can discriminate with regard to that information.
Sometimes I wish people who support women's rights would move to Pakistan. If women's rights is what they really want, they can have it. <- This statement makes just as much sense as yours.
Somalia has a government which practices quasi-Sharia [1]. Fun fact: most people who want to reduce the size of western governments don't actually favor increasing the scope of the government to pre-marital sex (a stoning offense in Somalia), wearing socks (failure to do so for women is punishable by flogging) or chewing khat (a floggable offense).
[1] Mahmud, who posts here and is Somalian, claims it's not quite Sharia. Knowing very little about Islamic law, I'll take his word for it.
Southern Somalia is ruled by warlords, as I understand it. That's what I'd expect in a country without a government; a country ruled by men rather than laws.
Government simply doesn't ruin everything it touches. I could make a similarly facile argument about how the market ruins everything it touches, turning all of life into a uniform sea of brands, destroying geographic and cultural distinctiveness, as well as laying ruin to the environment and every other cost externality that isn't accounted for in the absence of a regulator to internalize those costs. Factories belching out fumes in foreign lands, child labour etc., all intermediated by the market so that you can buy your consumer goods in your well-lit mall without needing to care about the blood and bones ground up in the machine, because it's all hidden from you: all you see is a price.
I'm in favour of mostly-free markets, and very-free civil liberties. I want as little government as possible, within the scope for the society I personally would like to see. Government that starts a lot fewer wars would be a fantastic start.
But when people go on about how the customer just needs to be educated and the free market will do its work, well, I just sigh. I don't want to have to do that work, because I know (a) I don't have time for that, and (b) in any case companies will be motivated to spend a lot more resources fooling me and people like me than I even have. Information asymmetries are real, and they strongly favour the wealthy. I don't think that's fair, and it's not a society I'd vote for.
The grandparent - algoshift - is simply mistaken about health insurance, for example. The vast majority of health spending is in the final years and months of life. But elderly people have no motivation to reduce this spending; even if educated, why would they reduce it, when the alternative is death? The fact of the matter is, we spend too much money and resources keeping old people alive but on the brink of death. I don't think that's fair either.
Government simply doesn't ruin everything it touches.
Nor did I claim it did. I just pointed out that it's silly to point out a nation with a government that is more intrusive than the US government and then suggest people who want less government should go live there.
My girlfriend is from Thailand and a few months ago I went to visit her parents and home town. She's from central Thailand. One thing that stuck me was the lack of "fat" people walking around. Everyone is skinny and healthy looking, especially older people. When I pointed this out to my girlfriend she said that only the youngest generation of under 10 year old are somewhat fat. This coincides with the first fast food chains and supermarkets opened in her home town about 10 years ago. It's obviously the "western diet" that's doing all this. Chuck full of fat and sugar.
The point I was trying to convey is that the "western diet" is causing obesity. Not whether it's the fat, the sugar or something else that's causing it.
Why do you think it's the specific components of the food and not the behavior the sellers of that food encourage?
Here's my theory. It takes 15 minutes for your body to realize it's full. Fast food chains encourage you to eat a lot of calories in a short period of time; it's what they advertise and it's the kind of product they deliver. This means that if you eat fast food, you are going to eat many more calories than you "want" before you realize you're satiated. If you take a McDonald's meal and turn it into a regular-sized meal with respect to calories, it's unlikely that you are going to get fat. Similarly, if you eat 2000 calories of spinach in one sitting times three meals a day every day, you're going to get fat. The problem is that the body doesn't want to eat 2000 calories of spinach in one sitting, but it does want to eat 2000 calories of cheeseburger and soda in one sitting.
In other words, McDonalds makes money because they can sell people more calories than they need. This, in turn, makes their customers gain weight.
(There are some details here, about how much easier it is to digest fat and carbohydrates than protein. But even if you eat a lot of protein, you'll still gain weight. Hell, that's what people who intentionally want to gain weight eat, they just eat a lot of it.)
While I agree, it's the combination (plus salt) that's been identified as particularly nefarious. See The End of Overeating by David Kessler, former FDA commissioner.
Jamie Oliver has been taking on the problem of bad food in schools in both the UK and the US. It's a really pernicious problem, mostly because of all of the politics and bureaucracy involved, and the heavy lobbying by the companies making the crap food. Pizza is a vegetable, right?
There does appear to be a "fat memory" (there's also a muscle memory -- those who've done strength training in their youth will make faster, bigger gains when resuming training later on).
But, absent some underlying organic cause or insult (injury, genetic propensity, illness), the same principles that work for those who have little trouble losing weight work for those who are obese. Perhaps a little more time and effort are involved.
The lesson that's been instructive to me as I travel through the decades has been to watch those who were typically thin as they hit their 30s and 40s. If they aren't practicing good nutrition and activity practices, even they tend towards girth, though it's usually a potbelly rather than an all-encompassing growth.
One you start a heavy diet, you've lost. There may be ways to lose weight that don't prompt the same response for your body. Maybe losing weight much slower? Or alternating fasts with periods of eating well? There is still much research to be done, and many ideas to be tested.
Yep, good point. Considering how much nutritional theory has been turned upside down in the past 10 years it's difficult to know when the body of research will more accurately reflect the numerous subtleties in the ways our bodies work.
Not only better food, but better health education in general, including P.E., the 'lab' component to all that book learning.
When you are fit and healthy, running around and playing games like soccer, volleyball, tennis, basketball is fun. They are activities which are social and which you can do throughout most of your adult life.
Same goes for swimming and running. Those are harder to teach as "fun," especially to children, since they don't necessarily have a game component and are more mental in nature. Yoga and weightlifting fall into this category too.
Regardless, it seems that some people obsess over the number on the scale or the appearance in the mirror, rather than focus on treating their bodies well and using them in active, physically rewarding ways. Weight and body image should follow from this approach, not drive it.
I really would love to see better foods in schools. It's largely a captive audience. If we could reduce the number of people who leave high school overweight, even if by just a small number, it would probably have pretty decent long-term benefits.
And likewise better college programs. For example, at my college, if there was a "good health" program I could have easily signed up for, which included aerobic/weight training and meals there's a good chance I would have done it.