The cost of obesity (and fixing it)
I don’t usually take estimates of the cost of bad diets and obesity too seriously because they are necessarily based on multiple assumptions, none of them verifiable. But I do like to collect them. Here are two papers from the American Journal of Health Promotion estimating such costs. One estimates the health benefits and savings in medical costs from diets reduced in saturated fat, sodium, and calories (a savings of $60-120 billion), and the other estimates cost savings and productivity increases for reduction in calories and sodium ($109-256 billion). Whatever the real savings are, they are likely to be enormous. And that’s just money. It’s harder to put a value on quality of life. Maybe that’s all we need to know at this point.
Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy has invented a Revenue Calculator for Soft Drink Taxes for estimating the amounts of money states and cities could raise from taxes on soft drinks. You type in the state or city, estimate the size of the tax, decide what kinds of drinks it’s for, and push the button. Bingo. California could raise about $1.8 billion a year from a 1 cent tax.
And the Department of Health and Human Service has hooked up with the Advertising Council for a new kids’ activity campaign on the Internet, this one using Maurice Sendak’s Wild Things tied in to a movie coming out in October. I wasn’t so happy about the last such campaign, which featured Shrek and is still up on the site. Shrek also advertises junk foods. Maybe this one will work better?
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Next public appearance
Ithaca, NY: Cornell
Graduate Field of Nutrition seminar, 100 Savage Hall, 4:00 p.m. on “Food politics: has the food revolution reached Washington?” Open to the public.
Comments
Great post. I calculated for NJ with a tax of .02 cents an ounce (six cents on a 12 oz drink), the revenue would be over 11 million dollars. It’s amazing! I’m ready to tax those drinks.
I totally agree that reducing bad fats, excess sodium, highly processed foods, and excess calories benefits people in more ways than we can count. But to tax sugary drinks reminds me a little too much of England taxing the tea, stamps, etc. I would rather see the government reduce their spending instead of finding things they think I don’t need and increasing taxes on those items.
Well, Marion, as I mentioned to you a couple years ago, I have been losing weight slowly, easily and steadily not by counting calories or buying diet books or joining Weight Watchers, etc., but by cooking at home from scratch, using as much unprocessed food as possible. I also source the food I buy much more carefully. (CSAs, farmers markets, direct from producers, plus my own hens for eggs and a small garden).
Most of my meals are simple and inexpensive, but tasty and satisfying. And I have learned to enjoy preparing food for me and the pets.
Eating consciously from the true bounty of our land makes every day Thanksgiving.
Oh, and it all started with our reporting on the pet food deaths of 2007.
@Gina–how nice to hear from you and with such good news. Plenty to be thankful for, indeed. You will be interested to know that we expect the galleys for the long-delayed pet food book, now titled “Feed Your Pet Right,” the first week in November and that the scheduled publication date is May 11. Progress! You are high on the list to get an early copy.
[...] and food experts, from Michael Pollan to Marion Nestle to Monica Reinagel, point out our system subsidizes cheap, high-fat, high-calorie, nutritionally [...]
I think the whole idea of quantifying costs here is misguided; yes, there’s a cost, but the point is, the obesity epidemic RESULTED from the approach of trying to maximize profits. It’s the corporatization of our food supply that has led to the obesity epidemic we are facing.
Also, healthcare costs are tricky…if you make people live longer you could argue this puts a greater burden on the healthcare system in the long-run. It’s not clear-cut.
Eating healthy is common sense…there’s no need to dive into economic analysis! Just do it.