{"id":765,"date":"2006-10-29T12:26:47","date_gmt":"2006-10-29T12:26:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/29\/give-the-fat-kid-a-break\/"},"modified":"2006-10-29T12:26:47","modified_gmt":"2006-10-29T12:26:47","slug":"give-the-fat-kid-a-break","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/2006\/10\/29\/give-the-fat-kid-a-break\/","title":{"rendered":"Give the Fat Kid a Break"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gina Kolata in the New York Times<\/cite> today reports on new attempts to blame obesity for the problems of the world<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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Last week the list of ills attributable to obesity grew: fat people cause global warming.<\/p>\n

This latest contribution to the obesity debate comes in an article by Sheldon H. Jacobson of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and his doctoral student, Laura McLay. Their paper, published in the current issue of The Engineering Economist, calculates how much extra gasoline is used to transport Americans now that they have grown fatter. The answer, they said, is a billion gallons a year.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This sort of thing is why people in the natural sciences have a hard time taking academic economists seriously.<\/p>\n

And if you’d like a side order of dopey policy suggestions to go with your silly cost estimates, the Times<\/cite> has you covered there, too:<\/p>\n

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The idea of using economic incentives to help people shed pounds comes up in the periodic calls for taxes on junk food. Martin B. Schmidt, an economist at the College of William and Mary, suggests a tax on food bought at drive-through windows. Describing his theory in a recent Op-Ed article in The New York Times, Dr. Schmidt said people would expend more calories if they had to get out of their cars to pick up their food. <\/p>\n

“We tax cigarettes in part because of their health cost,” he wrote. “Similarly, the individual’s decision to lead a sedentary lifestyle will end up costing taxpayers.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I’ve been kind of busy lately, and haven’t really been keeping up with the news, so I might’ve missed something. Did a bunch of magical alien space fairies sprinkle pixie dust over all the actual problems of the world, leaving this sort of crap as the most pressing concern that we have?<\/p>\n

If nothing else, at least think about the Reefer Madness<\/cite> effect here. There are real health risks associated with obesity, but if people insist on putting forward these sorts of ludicrously exaggerated claims about the societal costs, it’s just going to undermine the serious health messages. In just the same way that telling teenagers that their heads will explode if they smoke marijuana makes them less likely to believe you about the dangers of cocaine and methamphetamine, blaming obesity for our oil consumption is going to lead to fat people saying “Screw you,” and ordering another cheeseburger. At the drive-through.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Gina Kolata in the New York Times today reports on new attempts to blame obesity for the problems of the world: Last week the list of ills attributable to obesity grew: fat people cause global warming. This latest contribution to the obesity debate comes in an article by Sheldon H. Jacobson of the University of… Continue reading Give the Fat Kid a Break<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in_the_news","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chadorzel.com\/principles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}