Childhood Obesity and Fast Food Restaurants

​Yesterday Rudy Nayga, the Tyson Chair in Food Policy Economics from the University of Arkansas, visited my department and gave a seminar on the relationship between childhood obesity and the location fast food restaurants in relation to schools.

​He gave a careful account of the difficulty in attributing causation (and not just correlation) between the distance of fast food restaurants to schools and children’s weights, and described the ways they tried to deal with the challenge. In short, he finds that for every extra fast food restaurant within a mile of an elementary school, the percentage of students at the school who are obese goes up by about 1 percentage point.

As you might imagine, the result provoked a lot of discussion. Some of it naturally revolved around the efficacy and effectiveness of new zoning laws. However, the most interesting part of the discussion for me was Rudy’s discussion on the sizes of cafeterias relative to the increasing study body, which results in many school children have to eat lunch as early as 10am! In many schools (including my own kids’ school), children have to be run through the cafeteria so quickly they hardly have time to eat. Couple that with the new federal guidelines limiting the number of calories that can be served, and it is no wonder many kids are starving by the time school gets out and beg to go to McDonalds!

In addition all the above, I'd also add that because of increased curricula requirements, PE has been cut to the bone in most schools.

Alas, it seems most of the discussions I hear about improving childhood health in schools revolve around "sexier" headline-grabbing issues like serving more fruits and veggies, serving more local foods, zoning rules, banning sodas, teaching gardening, and so on. It may just be that the less "sexy" (and potentially less costly) issues like encouraging exercise, increasing cafeteria time or size, or giving a small afternoon snack, may be more promising.

And, at the end of the day, we have to keep in mind that it is not just childhood obesity that is a concern.  We also have to worry about childhood hunger. 

The Government's Role in Combating Obesity

The Wall Street Journal had a nice ​forum on whether and to what extent the goverment should "combat" obesity from three experts with different perspectives.  I come down on the issue somewhere between Tanner and Wansink.   

Do Your Friends Know You Better Than You Know Yourself?

According to Science News, ​new findings from a longitudinal study following kids since 1976 revealed some surprising results.  Here is the basic study set up according to the authors

Over two years, Montreal students in grades 1, 4 and 7 completed peer evaluations of their classmates and rated them in terms of aggression, likeability and social withdrawal. The students also did self-evaluations

The outcome?​

We found the evaluations from the group of peers were much more closely associated with eventual adult outcomes than were their own personality perceptions from childhood.

​These findings tie nicely in with the research Bailey Norwood and I have conducted over the past several years (see here, here, or here), where we argue (and find) that the best way to predict what someone will do  in the grocery store is often not to ask them what they will do but rather to ask them what they think someone else will do.  

The human mind is skilled in the art of deception (including self deception).  This research reminds me of a quote by Richard Feynman:​

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.

Economic Impact Review

I can't tell you how many times I've heard reports to the effect: "<<insert paid consul​ting company name here>> has shown that for every $1 the state invests in <<insert your favorite activity here such as a farmers market, beef packing plant, bio-fuel plant, new community center, etc.>> our state/city/town will create <<insert some arbitrarily large number here>> additional jobs.

Some of these claims are no doubt accurate, but all too often it is difficult to know ​how the estimates were generated, what assumptions led to the job-creating estimates, how sensitive the estimates are to the assumptions, or if there are better uses for the investment dollars on the margin.

Fortunately, my occasional co-author Matt Rousu has started up a new website reviewing economic impact studies: Economic Impact Review.​

This is a worthwhile endeavor and I wish him the best of luck with the project.  

Jonathan Haidt on Food

An amusing passage from pg. 13 of Jonathan Haidt's book The Righteous Mind​:

And, why do so many Westerners, even secular ones, continue to see choices about food and sex as being heavily loaded with moral significance? Liberals sometimes say that religious conservatives are sexual prudes for whom anything other than missionary-position intercourse within marriage is a sin.  But conservatives can just as well make fun of liberal struggles to choose a balanced breakfast - balanced among moral concerns about free-range eggs, fair-trade coffee, naturalness, and a variety of toxins, some of which (such as genetically modified corn and soybeans) pose a greater threat spiritually than biologically."