4 ms·

To an extent, but we're 10x richer than we were in 1900; we do not eat 10x as many calories. And it's poor people who eat more calories now, not rich people.

CharlieDigital 4y ago
> it's poor people who eat more calories now, not rich people That's my point; if you look at a map of obesity rates in the US overlaid with a map of poverty, there's a very strong correlation. The cheap access to calories today makes it easier to overconsume. In the past, the high cost of calories meant that only the wealthy could really ever become obese (outside of genetic factors).
- bombcar 4y ago
  The snide comment would be that obesity and unbearable debt are indicators of lack of control, and that poor people will have this more (because lack of control leads to being poor). But even if absolutely true, how do you solve for that? Laws limiting what you can purchase/eat would simply be a non-starter.
  - scarmig 4y ago
    I mean, if we were confident one particular food source contributes more to obesity than others, we have a solution that we know would work: tax it (and ideally dedicate revenues to some kind of universal food tax credit). People would consume less of it at the margin and then be less obese. It would rankle some people, but so do taxes on alcohol and nicotine. My big concern is that I'm skeptical whether we can really identify those "bad" foods and that even if we could whether we could ensure the government would whitelist/blacklist the correct foods. As far as lack of control goes, I'd be curious if fatter/poorer people would do worse on some kind of adult marshmallow test. Maybe see if you can get them to sit perfectly still for 20 minutes in exchange for a monetary reward. I don't have a strong sense that they'd do worse than skinnier/richer people.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      That's the solution everyone wants "identify bad food and tax/ban it" - but when apple juice has as much or more calories than soda, what do you do? A per-calorie tax might work if you rebated it correctly, but the mechanics of that would be insane. Perhaps it could be tied to basic income - we will tax calories at ten cents per calorie, and give each person 2000 calories (200$) a day ...
      - scarmig 4y ago
        That's interesting. A large side of fries at Macdonald's would be $50 (though I suppose everything else would also jump a lot in price). Definitely creates a strong incentive to consume less. Implementation wise, it probably would be best to begin at something like half a cent per calorie and then ratchet it up until we hit some target number (or until we discover it doesn't actually influence behavior). Then at the end of the year people get a $4000 dollar tax credit.
  - CharlieDigital 4y ago
    There have been many studies looking at this phenomenon. One hypothesis is that this is due to "food deserts" where the lack of access to fresh foods leads to over-reliance on processed foods for caloric needs. It is no coincidence that there is also a strong correlation between food deserts (at a national and local level) with lower income. The solution probably isn't banning specific foods, but to solve the access problem and address socio-economic factors. Better health and nutrition education may also be key.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      The food desert thing should be testable, no? Like identify one of the worst ones, and subsidize a normal grocery store for however many years necessary, and see what it has done?

CharlieDigital 4y ago

> it's poor people who eat more calories now, not rich people That's my point; if you look at a map of obesity rates in the US overlaid with a map of poverty, there's a very strong correlation. The cheap access to calories today makes it easier to overconsume. In the past, the high cost of calories meant that only the wealthy could really ever become obese (outside of genetic factors).

bombcar 4y ago
The snide comment would be that obesity and unbearable debt are indicators of lack of control, and that poor people will have this more (because lack of control leads to being poor). But even if absolutely true, how do you solve for that? Laws limiting what you can purchase/eat would simply be a non-starter.
- scarmig 4y ago
  I mean, if we were confident one particular food source contributes more to obesity than others, we have a solution that we know would work: tax it (and ideally dedicate revenues to some kind of universal food tax credit). People would consume less of it at the margin and then be less obese. It would rankle some people, but so do taxes on alcohol and nicotine. My big concern is that I'm skeptical whether we can really identify those "bad" foods and that even if we could whether we could ensure the government would whitelist/blacklist the correct foods. As far as lack of control goes, I'd be curious if fatter/poorer people would do worse on some kind of adult marshmallow test. Maybe see if you can get them to sit perfectly still for 20 minutes in exchange for a monetary reward. I don't have a strong sense that they'd do worse than skinnier/richer people.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    That's the solution everyone wants "identify bad food and tax/ban it" - but when apple juice has as much or more calories than soda, what do you do? A per-calorie tax might work if you rebated it correctly, but the mechanics of that would be insane. Perhaps it could be tied to basic income - we will tax calories at ten cents per calorie, and give each person 2000 calories (200$) a day ...
    - scarmig 4y ago
      That's interesting. A large side of fries at Macdonald's would be $50 (though I suppose everything else would also jump a lot in price). Definitely creates a strong incentive to consume less. Implementation wise, it probably would be best to begin at something like half a cent per calorie and then ratchet it up until we hit some target number (or until we discover it doesn't actually influence behavior). Then at the end of the year people get a $4000 dollar tax credit.
- CharlieDigital 4y ago
  There have been many studies looking at this phenomenon. One hypothesis is that this is due to "food deserts" where the lack of access to fresh foods leads to over-reliance on processed foods for caloric needs. It is no coincidence that there is also a strong correlation between food deserts (at a national and local level) with lower income. The solution probably isn't banning specific foods, but to solve the access problem and address socio-economic factors. Better health and nutrition education may also be key.
  - bombcar 4y ago
    The food desert thing should be testable, no? Like identify one of the worst ones, and subsidize a normal grocery store for however many years necessary, and see what it has done?