Thing is I think by now it's pretty clear that American obesity is mostly a function of cultural norms regarding the size of food portions. One of the first things I always notice when I eat out in America is "shit, this is a ton of food" whereas whenever I eat out in thinner countries, its "shit, I should have ordered an appetizer as well... And humans have a well-known tendency to "clean your plate". The tax should on large meals/portions... This would work as a tax on big people, of course, but on the other hand, they might be the ones who gain the most. The tax could then be used to help fund health-care/research. Tall, thin people who work out and eat a lot might lose, but that merely makes the tax progressive...
I'm always skeptical when people say that "food X is bad, America would be healthier if we ate less X" -- or that "we need to eat more of food Y." Most of these are not driven by any hard evidence. Too much salt is bad, but the Japanese eat the most salt, and are also the healthiest. (They also eat less overall...) So, I just looked up some research on salt. The authors have a strong conclusion:
"High salt intake is associated with significantly increased risk of stroke and total cardiovascular disease. Because of imprecision in measurement of salt intake, these effect sizes are likely to be underestimated. These results support the role of a substantial population reduction in salt intake for the prevention of cardiovascular disease."
Also made me want to cut salt out of my diet completely.
But wait a minute, "is associated with" -- you mean there is just correlation? Of course, there is also stronger correlation between health and drinking expensive wine, but concluding we should all go drink expensive wine is clearly a reverse-causality finding...
The paper goes on to write: "So, Validation of these predictions by a randomised controlled trial of the effects of long term reduction in dietary salt on morbidity and mortality from cardiovascular disease would provide definite proof. At present, a study of this kind is not available and, in fact, it is extremely unlikely that it will ever be performed because of practical difficulties, the long duration required, and high costs."
And therein lies the problem. Salt sounds like a villain to me. Definitely, let's cut salt intake somehow. Tax it! But as the paper itself states, there just is no definitive evidence that salt is a villain. Definite proof that if Americans cut their salt intake by 2/3rds, it will reduce blood pressure, but no hard proof that this will have any significant impact on anything. And then how do we explain salt-addicted, long-lived East Asia? But with salt, at least we've got the first-stage evidence that it does something, but I suspect with many other foods which are popularly thought to be healthy/unhealthy, or which people think make them fat (such as fat itself), we haven't even got that much.
I'm still big into eating a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, fish, and limiting saturated fats, plus a multi-vitamin and exercise, but these all have a feel of cultural suspicion about them. It may not matter what you eat so much as not eating too much. Or it could be that none of these things matter, but that loving and laughing every day will keep you young. What i do with my grandparents is call them up, and try to make them laugh. To make them feel some emotion. Maybe that's the key...
In any case, I wish Lowenstein would write an article about Fed Reserve stupidity...
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