George Washington University researchers added in things such as sick days, lost productivity, even the need for extra gasoline — and found the annual cost of being obese is $4,879 for a woman and $2,646 for a man.
That is far more than the cost of being merely overweight — $524 for women and $432 for men.
Full article on calculating the real cost of obesity.
The Japanese…now have to face measurements of their waistlines during annual checkups if they’re between 40 and 74 years old, the New York Times reports… Anyone with a weight-related medical concern and whose waist is bigger than the acceptable size — a rigorous 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women — must lose weight, according to a new law. Otherwise, they face compulsory diet advice and follow-up visits for three to six months. For some perspective, the average male waist size in the U.S. is 39 inches, while American women average 36.5 inches.
Full Wall Street Journal blog post on Japan’s mandatory waist measurement.
Full story at MSNBC’s World Blog.
(We’re thinking about doing this at the NCPA.)
Background:
High-energy density foods are less expensive per calorie than fresh fruits and vegetables…Data collected from a Seattle supermarket by Drewnowski (2004) suggest that, per calorie, carrots cost virtually five times more than cookies or potato chips and orange juice costs virtually five times as much as soft drinks… Between 1985 and 2000, fruit and vegetable prices in the US increased by about 40% while the price of soft drinks dropped by 23%.
Findings:
[Other things equal,] we find that a woman of average height who stated that prices were “not important at all” when purchasing food products had a weight circumference 4.5 centimeters (roughly 1.8 inches) smaller than those who stated that price was “very important.”
Full study on obesity and price sensitivity here.
It’s economics:
The rise in obesity is attributable primarily to changes in the price of consuming, and the cost of expending, calories — changes that are byproducts of otherwise beneficial technological advances. The price of food and thus of calories has long been trending downward because of agricultural innovations that have greatly reduced the time and resources required to go from hungry to full.
Long-run changes in economic incentives explain the cross-country pattern of obesity as well as its increase. Explanations based on biology, addition or culture are unconvincing because they leave unexplained why, for example, Africans are less obese than Americans or why widespread obesity is a relatively recent phenomenon.
See the full article on obesity and economics by Richard Posner and Tomas J. Philipson.
The fashionable response, based on the belief that better information can lead to better behavior, is to influence consumers through things like calorie labeling — for instance, there’s a mandate in the health care reform act requiring restaurant chains to post the number of calories in their dishes.
Calorie labeling is a good thing; dieters should know more about the foods they are eating. But studies of New York City’s attempt at calorie posting have found that it has had little impact on dieters’ choices.
In some cases, obese children should be removed from their homes, according to a group of child health specialists from England and Ireland.
If parents fail to provide medical treatment for a child with a chronic disease like asthma or epilepsy, government welfare officials can put the young patient in foster care. Should they do the same for children who are obese — and therefore at risk of developing lifelong complications such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes?
Full Los Angeles Times article on foster care for obese children here. See the paper published by the British Medical Journal online edition here.
Many employers are betting they can find your price. But does any of it work?
The perks that companies attach to wellness programs come in a variety of forms and sizes. Some reward employees just for having a health evaluation or enrolling in a class. Others require measurable exercise achievement. Some companies offer money, some vacation trips. Some refund the cost of Weight Watchers classes. Others reduce health-insurance premiums…
One of the largest effort to date was an observational study by Cornell University. It looked at seven employer programs and found that the average weight loss in most was little more than a pound. [emphasis added]
| The Case for Genes | The Case for Environment | |
| Studies show that weights of adopted children more closely resemble those of their biological rather than adoptive parents, raising the possibility that genes trump the environment. | Lab animals given a junk-food diet gain weight. People moving to the U.S. from less-obese countries gain weight and people moving from the U.S. tend to lose weight. |
Full article on the causes of obesity.
18 overweight men and women walked on treadmills in multiple sessions while either eating enough that day to replace the calories burned during exercise or not. Afterward, the men displayed little or no changes in their energy-regulating hormones or their appetites, much as in the other study. But the women uniformly had increased blood concentrations of acylated ghrelin and decreased concentrations of insulin after the sessions in which they had eaten less than they had burned. Their bodies were directing them to replace the lost calories.
In physiological terms, the results “are consistent with the paradigm that mechanisms to maintain body fat are more effective in women,” Braun and his colleagues wrote. In practical terms, the results are scientific proof that life is unfair. Female bodies, inspired almost certainly “by a biological need to maintain energy stores for reproduction,” Braun says, fight hard to hold on to every ounce of fat. Exercise for many women (and for some men) increases the desire to eat.
Full article on exercise’s role in weight loss.
