I recently posted a blog showing what television channels are most commonly used to advertise junk food to kids. Here’s a couple other pictures illustrating some fascinating facts about such advertising. First, the advertisements don’t seem to place as much emphasis on food as they do for adult advertisements: And why is that? Because they…
Whatever you think about the proper role of the government in nudging adult Americans into healthier habits, you ought to be open to the idea that we, as a society, should be doing something to reduce obesity among children. As I wrote about in Free Market Madness, once people become obese, biology conspires against them…
One of my MBA students was kind enough to send me the following picture, from The Onion. It’s hard to think of a better image to summarize what is happened to the youth of America over the last generation. Parents Chart Child’s Width on Kitchen Wall
In a recent article in the Atlantic magazine, Amanda Ripley argues that we should dramatically diminish, or even get rid of, high school sports in the United States, because they are throwing off our priorities and sucking up our funding. I began the article with even more than my typical skeptical eye, having written not long ago…
A July article from Health Affairs published just how many parks and beaches in United States have banned smoking, since 1993. The picture for US parks is below: These bans have grown in popularity even though the risk of secondhand smoke is dramatically reduced outdoors. In fact, many US parks are quite large, from what…
The importance of sleep is perhaps most realized when we become sick. When we are hospitalized and most in need of every ounce of health, though, hospital care practically guarantees that we won’t get good sleep. Fortunately, two approaches hold promise to improve sleep for patients: one organizational, and the other a common trick of…
I found a wonderful picture that nicely summarizes how much Americans spend on health care each year. The picture was produced by the Milliman company, and represents typical spending for a family of four. The $22,000 figure represents overall healthcare costs for this family. You’ll see that $12,000 of this money comes from employers. That…
Here is video from a talk I recently gave at the University of Wisconsin, laying out a few of the reasons I think the government needs to play a role in combating the obesity epidemic. If you dig further into the conference website, you will see a video from my opponent in the debate, Jacob…
In the battle to combat obesity, many recent policies have taken aim at restaurants. New York City banned trans fats from restaurants, and now is limiting sugary drink sales. Many local governments have pushed for restaurants to provide calorie estimates to customers, and that effort is going national soon (as part of Obamacare). Why pick…
Think of the last few times you watched a popular movie that involved any kind of sex scene? Not as in pornographic sex, but as in two characters ended up in bed together and had, ahem, conjugal relations. In how many of those scenes did either participant make mention of a condom before the act?…