USDA Affirms Nickels Against Change

It’s nice when the government’s investigations find positive, statistically significant impacts. Small changes bring about small but well directed results. Which is the case for the current USDA study on The Effect of Food and Beverage Prices on Children’s Weight (June 2011, Minh Wendt and Jessica E. Todd). Meaning that a few nickels and dimes more or less for good or bad food bring about identifiable changes in the body mass index of younger children. Put another way: raise the price of bad foods or lower the price of good foods and maybe, just maybe there will eventually be a subsequent corresponding impact on how fat the kids get.

Nickels and dimes might just make a difference.

So big does the leap have to be to presuming that change can also occur for an entire food sector by adding nickels and dimes to build a better food service? Does raising the cost of a burger by way of inspiring compliance with giving a nickel because it’s the cool thing to do bring about the same statistically significant results?

We believe it will in fact amplify the impact – to the point where more and more people will want to be collaboratively involved and will reinforce the positive changes that result no matter which way the provider does what the USDA is suggesting – if the cost of good foods goes down or the cost of bad foods goes up.

While it’s not the easiest of studies to read – what with all the charts and pesky facts – the USDA study is encouraging. And it reinforces what other studies have demonstrated, even if those studies also suggest their own little tastes of change. Theirs is a finding worth noting. (Now, of course, with a few nickels and dimes from investors, we might just get to see whether there really is a monetary impact on this kind of change.)

 

Fatter Kids Walk to School!

WELL MAYBE THAT’S A LEAP

As discussed in the paper, we find a larger impact of the top 10 fast-food chains than for the broader definition of fast-foods.  To conserve space, we show estimates for the broad definition excluding ice cream, donuts, and coffee shops, and for the top 10 chains.

The Effect of Fast Food On Obesity: 5% association with fatter kids (who live and walk to school?)

The Effect of Fast Food On Obesity, a paper put together by social scientists associated with the University of California, Berkeley, presented this opening abstract. Not really much need to read the rest of the paper, assuming you can, to understand the technical elements. The numbers are pretty clear; the conclusions as represented.

Now what is the reason again that we don’t do something to use the physical power of this phenomenon for a movement for good?

Passing a few nickels and dimes through the money system of the fast food sector (excluding some of the best flavored versions, of course) would have likely no impact on their bottom line. Yet it could well do much for what the rest of us want to do as we seek to empower our locality to influence the food that we eat and that is near to the ones we consider dear.

Here is the opening abstract for your digestion. The full article is viewable at http://elsa.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp/fastfoodJan09.pdf.

Abstract. We investigate the health consequences of changes in the supply of fast food using the exact geographical location of fast food restaurants.  Specifically, we ask how the supply of fast food affects the obesity rates of 3 million school children and the weight gain of over 1 million pregnant women.  We find that among 9th grade children, a fast food restaurant within a tenth of a mile of a school is associated with at least a 5.2 percent increase in obesity rates. There is no discernable effect at .25 miles and at .5 miles. Among pregnant women, models with mother fixed effects indicate that a fast food restaurant within a half mile of her residence results in a 2.5 percent increase in the probability of gaining over 20 kilos. The effect is larger, but less precisely estimated at .1 miles. In contrast, the presence of non-fast food restaurants is uncorrelated with obesity and weight gain. Moreover, proximity to future fast food restaurants is uncorrelated with current obesity and weight gain, conditional on current proximity to fast food. The implied effects of fast-food on caloric intake are at least one order of magnitude smaller for mothers, which suggests that they are less constrained by travel costs than school children. Our results imply that policies restricting access to fast food near schools could have significant effects on obesity among school children, but similar policies restricting the availability of fast food in residential areas are unlikely to have large effects on adults.