2009.11.20 胖人对美国有好处吗？

shiyi18

Are Fat People Good for America?
By Derek Thompson
NOVEMBER 20, 2009
SHARE
So there's this Wall Street Journal column about how we should be nicer to obese people because Winston Churchill was pretty fat, and he did a good job during World War II, and where would we be without Alexandre Dumas' chubby little fingers and Catherine the Great's heft, and so on. It took me a while to see that the piece was written by Joe Queenan, a satirist, and was not meant (I think?) to be a terribly weighty contribution to the obesity-in-America discussion. But I think it inadvertently raises an important point. Those historical fatties were mostly really rich.




From an historical perspective obesity is a privilege of the rich. Throughout much of history food costs ate (as it were) much deeper into disposable incomes. But food companies have made remarkable strides in the last century mass-producing food that is both very cheap and very fatty. From an economic perspective, cheap food is a good thing. From a health perspective, cheap, fatty food is dangerous since our evolutionary instinct to maximize caloric intake has married our economic instinct to buy cheap. Today our obesity epidemic is especially acute in poor communities. And there's a simple explanation. Take a look at this graph of how butter and soda prices have fallen in the last three decades...


graph fat food.png

...and this graph of national obesity graphed against time spent eating.
timeeatingfat.png
See the six countries with the highest % of population with BMI>30? Four of those countries -- the US, New Zealand, Australia and Canada -- happen to be the four countries with the most McDonald's per capita in the world (the UK is number 9). What does this weight do to our health care system? It's difficult to know for sure, but one study estimates that obesity will cost the US $344 billion in health costs by 2018. Take that number with a grain of salt (and only a small grain of salt, America!) but the bottom line is pretty clear to me. There are negative externalities to our ability to produce cheap, fast, fat food. They are very costly. And we should think seriously about ways to price those negative externalities. So yes, the history books are heavy with portly heroes. And nope, I don't think that's an argument for doing nothing.


Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the Work in Progress newsletter.




胖人对美国有好处吗？
作者：德里克-汤普森
2009年11月20日
分享
华尔街日报》有一篇专栏，讲的是我们应该对肥胖者好一点，因为温斯顿-丘吉尔很胖，而且他在二战期间干得不错，如果没有大仲马胖乎乎的小手指和凯瑟琳大帝的体重，我们会在哪里，等等。我花了一些时间才发现，这篇文章是由讽刺作家乔-奎纳写的，并不是要（我想？）对美国的肥胖问题的讨论作出非常有分量的贡献。但我认为它无意中提出了一个重要观点。那些历史上的胖子大多非常富有。




从历史角度来看，肥胖是富人的特权。在历史上的大部分时间里，食品成本对可支配收入的侵蚀要深得多。但是食品公司在上个世纪取得了显著的进步，大量生产既非常便宜又非常肥胖的食物。从经济角度来看，便宜的食物是一件好事。从健康的角度来看，廉价的脂肪食品是危险的，因为我们的进化本能是最大限度地摄入热量，这与我们购买廉价的经济本能相匹配。今天，我们的肥胖流行病在贫困社区尤为严重。这有一个简单的解释。看看这个黄油和苏打水价格在过去三十年中如何下降的图表...


图脂肪食品.png

...以及这张全国肥胖症与饮食时间的关系图。
花时间吃脂肪.png
看到BMI>30的人口比例最高的六个国家吗？其中四个国家--美国、新西兰、澳大利亚和加拿大--恰好是世界上人均麦当劳最多的四个国家（英国是第9位）。这种重量对我们的卫生保健系统有什么影响？很难确定，但一项研究估计，到2018年，肥胖将使美国的健康成本达到3440亿美元。对这个数字，我们要慎重考虑（而且只是一小部分盐，美国！），但对我来说，底线是非常清楚的。我们生产廉价、快速、肥胖食物的能力有负面的外部因素。它们是非常昂贵的。我们应该认真思考如何为这些负面的外部因素定价。所以，是的，历史书上有很多肥胖的英雄。不，我不认为这是一个什么都不做的理由。


德里克-汤普森（Derek Thompson）是《大西洋》杂志的工作人员，也是《工作进展》通讯的作者。