Features
Education Key in Fighting Obesity, Says Economist
Study finds targeted information needed to tackle society's weight problem, reduce health-care costs
BY ANDREW VOWLES
Feeding consumers better information about food and health is a key to tackling obesity, says a U of G agricultural economist.
Providing more — and more-targeted — information about the health effects of consumers' dietary choices may help shrink both expanding waistlines and attendant health-care costs for treating diseases linked to obesity and excess weight, says Prof. Getu Hailu of the Department of Food, Agricultural and Resource Economics.
Besides a need for the skinny on food, his extensive literature review conducted last summer found researchers need to learn more about the economic causes of obesity, perhaps not an altogether surprising finding for an economist.
“We need to educate society,” says Hailu. “I don't think people have good information.”
Obesity rates have increased in Canada during the past quarter-century, he says. The obesity rate for children aged two to 17 rose to eight per cent in 2004 from about three per cent in 1978/79, according to the Canadian Community Health Survey. Over the same period, the adult obesity rate rose to 23.1 per cent, or 5.5 million people, from 13.8 per cent. “That's a huge increase.”
Working with Inga Gorjaciha, a fourth-year economics student hired under a summer research assistantship, Hailu compiled data on rates of obesity and overweight as well as health and economic information from a variety of journals.
Their extensive review turned up no shortage of studies, again perhaps not surprising if the prevalence of news headlines on the topic is any indication. But Hailu questions how much solid, reliable information is available to consumers and how much of that information gets to the right people.
He's especially worried about lack of understanding among lower-income and less-educated groups, who are typically more prone to higher obesity rates. Noting that Canada 's Food Guide is currently being revised, he says it's important to explore different ways to share its recommendations.
How is information shared with consumers? What's the role of the family doctor in discussing nutrition and health implications? How to educate children and teens — many seeing vending machines being removed from their schools and confronting new menu choices in the cafeteria — about proper eating habits? How to cut through often-conflicting dietary and health claims, typified by diet plans from Atkins to South Beach?
If individual behaviour and cultural factors play a role, Hailu's study also found that wider factors from technology to agricultural production to governmental policy feed society's weight problem. Take corn production, a heavily subsidized sector in the United States. Corn is used to make fructose, a high-calorie sweetener found in all kinds of foods and beverages.
Subsidies for corn encourage farmers to grow more of the crop. In a self-feeding cycle, stepped-up agricultural technology and production allow even greater yields, leading to cheaper energy-dense products for food manufacturers and consumers. Who's going to eat the daily recommended amounts of relatively more expensive fruits and vegetables when you can opt for a cheaper sugar hit in processed foods, asks Hailu.
He applauds government regulations requiring manufacturers to include the amount of trans fats on product labels, because these fats are known to increase the risk of heart disease and other conditions.
Hailu also points to implications of obesity and overweight, including increased health-care costs to treat everything from cardiovascular disease to Type 2 diabetes. His review underlined the economic costs of absenteeism, premature death and lost productivity linked to these concerns.
“If we're not productive, we're going to be less competitive.”
He plans to look more closely at another aspect of behaviour that he calls “discounting the future.” Just as people may opt for spending over saving — today is more important than tomorrow — people may also decide to live large now because they believe they won't have to face a reckoning later. “From an economic point of view, it's a huge cost to society,” he says.