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alone and welcome to cross talk on peter lavelle bigger is not always better obesity in the western world is truly of epidemic proportions they have been repeated calls for greater awareness of this serious social and medical problem who is to blame individuals in their choices or is it simply the eating culture. and you can. start to. discuss the impact of fast food and other factors on obesity i'm joined by kelly brownell he's the director of the rudd center for food policy and obesity at yale university in dallas we have jacob sullum he's a senior editor of reason magazine and reason dot com and in irving we go to t. macand he's a professor at chapman university and also a research fellow at the hoover institution of stanford university and another

member of our crosstalk team on the hunger all right cross talk rules and effective means you can jump in anytime you want kelly i'd like to go to you first obesity is a very serious problem when we hear about awareness all the time but how is awareness been translated into cutting down on obesity. it's a very serious problem not only in the developed countries but in the developing world as well places like india and china have rampant obesity it's now surpassed hunger as the chief nutrition problem and so countries are facing massive health care costs awareness is important to the extent that it leads the government to take action on the factors that are driving these problems awareness knowledge and education is probably less important when directed in the biju roles because in the united states we've been doing those things now for a long time and they haven't had much impact on the problem well if i can stay with you why hasn't it had an impact well because the if you have so many social factors driving a problem like what happened with tobacco several decades ago just telling people

that a problem is severe that it could hurt your health really won't have much impact on behavior and exactly with tobacco what's been shown is a change in the environmental conditions that are driving the problem in the first place is really the ticket to solving people if i go to you is it really is that it's other social issues driving this i thought it was just people eating too much food. i happen to agree with you i think it's people eating too much food and those who care about it are not providing enough leadership they always rely on some government program or commission or some legislation or regulation instead of going to the heart of the matter and trying to convince people to change their behavior after all we're supposed to be rational human beings capable of thinking things through and if we are addressed carefully precisely factually maybe that's the way to change our behavior rather than keeping nudging us and pushing us this way and pushing us that way and putting our confidence in burke rats who by the way

are pretty fat themselves. if i go to you i mean is it really a personal responsibility or is it other social conditions. well i'm going to turn to me to my husband and go ahead and in dallas i'm concerned about. i'm concerned about the idea of the government should take an interest in what we eat and how much exercise we get those are very personal decisions obviously they have consequences you can try to educate people about the consequences but it's ultimately up to them i don't think that we should be trying to intervene in a way that encourages people to move one way or the other by taking away options or making options less attractive through some kind of central planning process or social engineering. if you go back to the example that kelly brownell mentioned of smoking in fact what you saw is that there was a very steady decline in smoke in the smoking rates in the united states after the

surgeon general's report now the government did do something it is true to report but the publicity surrounding the health effects of smoking were sufficient in themselves so this is really just jacob jacob to lead me with a substantial reduction i live ok i did this i was primarily persuasion not not a course of a pro ok only it was coersion i mean i live here in russia and i will i smoke in russia because i can afford it i can afford it in the united states that if i go to united states i quit because they tax it tax it very very heavily that is right incentive why can't you do what we just tax food that bad food for you let's do that tax it well kelly brown also has suggested that i think there are some serious problems with that. in order to in order to apply that system a system of subsidies for so-called good foods and a system of taxes for so-called bad food you have to first of all classify them which is a very difficult thing in itself then you're essentially centrally planning the

prices for a huge sector of the economy in order to try to encourage people to eat what you consider to be a better diet ok then you have to monitor what people do with ingredients that they buy they are they making secretly baking cakes and cookies at home how do we prevent that i think it's really. just from a practical standpoint obviously i have i have moral reservations and philosophical objections to it but from a practical standpoint it simply can't be done i mean russia had had some serious experience with the failures of central planning and this is one example of that attempting to to do something which is which is really not feasible ok kalif we'll go to you on that somehow people always are coming back on this one as you to get say in defense of a member of that habit and let's let's let's go with kelly here go ahead cali the thing the other things your two guests have said can be defensible that it makes sense for government to stay out of this business as much as possible but we've been doing that now for for decades while the obesity problem has grown and grown and nobody would consider it a successful experiment so we simply have to do more and the question is if you

implore people more schooled the more educate the more whether you're going to get to the goal line of having less social cost for obesity and the answer that question is clearly no so what do you do you have to do something and that's where governments getting involved around the world and very constructive ideas sure and something like taxing foods like sugar sweetened beverages is completely defensible and by the way would. be to some extent when the surgeon general's report came out or hang on just. keep going and going to finish up with generals or you're going to jump in this week you haven't let him finish this is where a cyclone i should spend. you was you sleeping on in this movie you know i don't ever finish their sentences. all right he better go ahead and there was a slight decline in into bacco consumption look with the surges and we are human being the economist of times this desire the ins are not going to be followed we

will not fall in line with those who want to make us then or there is no way to force taught you and then by the way i think there's any reason and so i could prove it by. all right kelly you know you will never finish your sentence if i don't jump am i think you will this time howie go ahead finish your point. give it my best there was a slight decline in smoking attributable to people's knowledge about the health consequences but the economists have made it very clear that high to high taxes on tobacco were the single greatest public health intervention that was done to curb and curbing smoking rates in the united states ok people if i can go to you i mean one argue one argument that's being made all the time is that it's rather crude but you know thin people are paying for the health costs for people that are overweight and it's thin people that are not making opie pl overweight obese obviously. you know we have to start a little bit at a more fundamental point in this discussion because it seems to be that your guest

from yeah go insists that we should be top down management in all of our behavior including smoking eating whatever and if you believe that then you have a completely false approach to human life i don't want to be governed even if i misbehave i don't want him to tell me whether i should smoke or eat or swim or walk or hike or whatever i want them to persuade me i want them to convince me and not nudge me and force me and so on i am not their child these people treat you like you were an invalid or a child that's impossible in a genuinely free society you can do that however in nazi germany and soviet russia because they're the people who are sovereign sit in the kremlin or at their right but here are the people who are sovereign our whole at home in their own backyards

and you have to persuade them and sometimes you will not succeed ok you have to live with that ok jacob lew we take that approach they're fine we can have a very libertarian society and i think all in principle all of us agree with that but we have still have the problem of obesity in the united states and it was pointed on this program and it's beginning to be a problem in the developing world as well so what do we do without the government on our back well i think that you know you're defining it as a social problem something that the government has to do something about in the outset i think that's a mistake if we go back to this argument you mentioned about the health care costs in fact it's not clear that obesity results in higher health care costs in the long run some of the research indicates that in fact it reduces total medical spending because even though annual costs are higher for people who are obese they don't live as long so the same situation as you have with smoking where yes you do have higher costs for the disease associated with smoking or the diseases. with obesity but you don't have the long term health care costs that you would have for people who live longer you don't have people drawing on public pensions for as long and so

ultimately it saved saves taxpayers money so that's the argument that this is a fiscal issue then you really have to look at every single kind of unhealthy behavior and say is this actually on balance costing taxpayers money if that's really the argument making i don't think that that should be the rationale but that's the rationale that is often presented by the advocates of social engineering i reject this whole premise this is a open ended rationale for meddling in our lives saying that anything that we do that affects our health is something where the government should be intervening well almost everything we do has implications for our health so in theory if it were practical the government could be there telling us how much sleep to get making sure we brush our teeth making sure we get off the couch and get some exercise making sure we don't have dessert making sure that we don't take a second helping and so on i mean there are all kinds of things that we do that that ultimately will cost money in terms of health care or will affect our longevity and if we're saying that all of those things are open for the government intervention that is logically a recipe for to tell terry is. saying that we're going to be coming to state as

a result of these arguments but the only thing that stops us from getting there you know there are practical concerns there are political concerns it's not a matter of principle it's ok a question i would have people going to have to determine if that's hard to do you have to be reasonable it's the same i'm going to jump in at this point after a short break we'll continue our conversation on obesity stay with our.

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her. this history still keeps its secrets but now it's time to feel. the song. and the a. welcome back to cross talk on people about talking about the issue of obesity and who should take responsibility for. but before let's see if we. the city is a problem in russia the world's population is expanding the reasons are many said

into real life style this freddo fast food and urban living however in russia the problem of a busy city is not as bad as in the u.s. or the u.k. according to a poll conducted by the public opinion research center the everetts russian is not a frequent fast food restaurants seventy percent of respondents said they had never eaten a false food for take percent admit going to foss food restaurants but only once a month and the other eleven percent say they have been to false food restaurants once or twice during the whole lifetime and only four percent of russians say that visit fast food restaurants every week so perhaps this may explain why a base city in russia is thin on the ground. ok if i go back to kelly is obesity a class issue too because you have poor people earning less that's why they're poor they're they may be working

a lot of hours expression during this economic crisis they buy cheap food that is not good for them so it's a matter of time in about a money in the in the kind of food culture that they're involved in and it becomes kind of cyclical variant they end up being obese their children are obese i mean is this an issue that needs to be it is what i'm getting at is a class issue as well. clashes class issues are important in countries like the us the poorest people have the highest rates of obesity in some developing countries it's the wealthiest people that have the highest rates but for the most part there is a link between poverty and obesity around the world because people are driven to the cheapest choices and those tend to be the most highly processed foods in some cases fast foods but you report on fast foods by the way the fast was aren't the only contributor to the obesity problem and russia like a number of other countries should see what's coming and there is increasing levels of obesity with time and if the country step in and do do some good things i think they can help prevent some of these problems in the future when you think about

that people are is it as a class issue i mean we use you pointed out it's all about choices but do poor people have fewer choices. well first of all poor people tend to stay poor about five years over their entire life and then they move into some other category so talking about poor people as if they were a permanent fixture in a society is completely fallacious then again poor people sometimes do things that others don't like about them they don't want them to do it so they should persuade them not to do it instead of making various of bureaucratic efforts to treat them like a bunch of babies you know i don't like this idea because there are two reasons one is it is immoral to treat another human being as if he were your subject rather than a sovereign person second the people who want to treat them that way aren't angels

the people who are birth gratz in governments running these regulatory programs are just us. fallible as anybody else and when they make a massive decision that is wrong then millions are affected not just their family not just themselves so i tend to favor an overall three sort of libertarian system because that respects individual rights and doesn't place some people above other people ok if i am going to take up i mean again sticking with the class issue here they do have fewer choices and so we it's hard it's easy. i don't know it's perceived that poor people are as persistent element in the american landscape in western in western countries all over the place i mean well there are there are millions and millions of people are poor all of the time if they're the same ones it doesn't really make any difference for this program in this topic here but if i could make a lot i think it is largely a class it largely

a class issue because it's a matter of taste and preferences that are often tied to socio economic status and what you have in the case of the. fatt jihad is that people will have a certain set of tastes and preferences that is a little class or rich people who value thinness and who value health above other things in their life say pleasure trying to impose their values on another set of people who from their point of you have the wrong values so when you say that people can't afford it well i don't i think that that's true i mean i do the shopping for my family i can tell you that you can eat well that is a healthy diet very cheaply in many cases more cheaply than you would if you ate a mcdonald's all the time or if you bought you know during those an ice cream all the time that's all that you ate so it's not simply a matter of the cost the relative cost you can eat a healthy diet for just as little if not less as an unhealthy diet this is a matter of taste and preferences and there are people who are who like the taste

of certain things they and they don't attach as greater value as other people might to weight issues and to long term health issues and in some respects this is similar to what you see with smoking which is that smoking is more concentrated among people who are less well off and there are a variety of reasons for that but it's not simply a matter of limited choices you also have to take into account what these people value now can you persuade them that they should value health more they should value thinness more you maybe you can't but i think the line should be drawn there if you feel if you fail at persuading them then you have no business trying to force them in one way or another whether it's through taxes or through more severe kinds of interventions ok kelly if i go to you and a lot of people say you blame the fast food chains and i think it's jacob made mention something that's very interesting is because it is the you create a certain taste that is very attractive in for young people as well kids like the taste of fast food it's very attractive as opposed to what would be probably better for you we don't learn that that's a good taste and maybe that's a different discussion but maybe is it really fast food chains and restaurants and

and soda pop and things like that is do they do they need to be pressured a whole lot more to make their quote their products a lot more healthy. well i don't think anybody believes that the food industry is the sole reason that there are high levels of obesity first of all there is physical inactivity at added in the problem but there are a lot of things that are affecting the food environment and i agree with both both of your other guests in a way that as a default it would make sense for government to stay on involved but governments involved in a lot of areas related to health and i don't know that our guests would oppose the use for example we could try to implore people or educate people to drive more safely or we can put airbags and cars we have our children immunized because to do so would create a public health catastrophe we put fluoride in the water there like a mile long list of things like this that countries do to help protect the health of their citizens so the question is diet nutrition and obesity crossed some threshold where the consequences of the behavior that we're seeing are bad enough

to justify government getting involved are obviously are to guess don't believe we've crossed that threshold i do because so many people are affected in such an adverse way and defaulting to individual responsibility and education and chlorine people just hasn't worked very well i don't know that anybody would suggest that it has and so we either have to live with the status quo would stay with the libertarian argument or do something different ok deeper what is what do we do that's different well i think. threshold is different from mine all right go ahead jacob i want to go to people he's drawing a lot is he saying ok he's saying once that health a health problem becomes common enough then that's when the government has to get involved that's where he draws the line what i'm saying in the line should be drawn between. things that we do to other people or hazards that are imposed upon them against their will things like air pollution or communicable diseases these are things that we are not choosing to do and things that people voluntarily where they

voluntarily assume the risks such as overeating or smoking those are things that we're and i'm not imposing my overeating on you. and the got there for the government does not have any business getting involved in traditional public. targets were things that were that were there were risks that were imposed upon people from the outside against their will and there is a very strong argument for government intervention in the case of people doing things that put their own health at risk where they know that it's risky and they choose to do it anyway the government has no business being involved ok teaberry can i go back to you i mean how can. you go back to go ahead. let me i go back to the analogy with the roads and how government has the authority to manage the roads remember roads are a public area they are like a lake or a forest which the government. took responsibility for and no wonder they are the ones who are then going to make policy there and they are going to try to make the

policy that is overall most prudent and sensible but that's not the same thing as dictating to me how to live in my backyard or my home whether i may have a barbecue whether i should go shopping for hamburgers or for see we that's not the same thing when you are confusing the public square with the private square you quickly run into the problem that generally speaking government has responsibility over the public square now why the it should is another debate in another great program for you but to use that as an analogy to defend dictating to private individuals how they should live in their homes what kind of food they should eat in their restaurants and so on that is an invalid argument ok if i'm going to go to kelly a bit i mean still i mean we really haven't resolved any issues here how much or

how much should the government be getting involved in dealing with obesity because a purely libertarian. policy hasn't worked here at least it did there's no evidence of that. maybe you're just. controlling country after country after country and it's especially becoming severe in some of the developing countries as i mentioned at the outset so yes we can take the stance that's been advocated by the two other guests and just live within continuing prevalence and just accept the cost to the human beings and overall society where we can do something about it if we do then we can look to other parallels were were government programs have been fairly effective and tobacco would be one alcohol would be another and there are some others and it's i understand the point about having government stay out of private the solutions and that's fine i can live without but if a government is involved with private decisions it subsidizes some parts of the food system and others it permits certain practices by industry that favor some

food over others and governments really involved in a big way but it hasn't been constructive until recently so we have to. be able to get right now many thanks to my guest today. kelly brownell and jacob sullum and thanks to our viewers for watching us here darkie see you next time and remember cross talk rules.