On a Diet
Steven Elías Alvarado
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research suggests that youth who grow up in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods face higher odds of becoming obese. Neighborhood effects scholars, meanwhile, have suggested that contextual influences may increase in strength as children age. This is the first study to examine whether developmental epochs moderate the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on obesity over time. I use thirteen waves of new restricted and geo-coded data on children ages 2 - 18 from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, Children and Young Adults. Bivariate and pooled logistic regression results suggest that neighborhood disadvantage has a stronger impact on adolescents' likelihood of becoming obese. Fixed effects models reveal that after adjusting for observed and unobserved confounders, adolescents continue to face higher odds of becoming obese due to the conditions associated with living in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Moreover, as research on adults suggests, girls experience larger impacts of neighborhood disadvantage than boys.
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Revealing the burden of obesity using weight histories
Andrew Stokes & Samuel Preston
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 19 January 2016, Pages 572–577
Abstract:
Analyses of the relation between obesity and mortality typically evaluate risk with respect to weight recorded at a single point in time. As a consequence, there is generally no distinction made between nonobese individuals who were never obese and nonobese individuals who were formerly obese and lost weight. We introduce additional data on an individual’s maximum attained weight and investigate four models that represent different combinations of weight at survey and maximum weight. We use data from the 1988–2010 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, linked to death records through 2011, to estimate parameters of these models. We find that the most successful models use data on maximum weight, and the worst-performing model uses only data on weight at survey. We show that the disparity in predictive power between these models is related to exceptionally high mortality among those who have lost weight, with the normal-weight category being particularly susceptible to distortions arising from weight loss. These distortions make overweight and obesity appear less harmful by obscuring the benefits of remaining never obese. Because most previous studies are based on body mass index at survey, it is likely that the effects of excess weight on US mortality have been consistently underestimated.
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Boyka Bratanova et al.
Appetite, forthcoming
Abstract:
Rising obesity represents a serious, global problem. It is now well established that obesity is associated with poverty and wealth inequality, suggesting that these factors may promote caloric intake. Whereas previous work has examined these links from an epidemiological perspective, the current paper examined them experimentally. In Study 1 we found that people experimentally induced to view themselves as poor (v. wealthy) exhibited increased calorie intake. In Study 2, participants who believed that they were poorer or wealthier than their interaction partners exhibited higher levels of anxiety compared to those in an equal partners condition; this anxiety in turn led to increased calorie consumption for people who had a strong need to belong. The findings provide causal evidence for the poverty-intake and inequality-intake links. Further, we identify social anxiety and a strong need to belong as important social psychological factors linking inequality to increased calorie intake.
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The Waiter’s Weight: Does a Server’s BMI Relate to How Much Food Diners Order?
Tim Döring & Brian Wansink
Environment and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does the weight of a server have an influence on how much food diners order in the high-involvement environment of a restaurant? If people are paying for a full meal, this has implications for consumers, restaurants, and public health. To investigate this, 497 interactions between diners and servers were observed in 60 different full-service restaurants. Diners ordered significantly more items when served by heavy wait staff with high body mass indexes (BMI; p < .001) compared with wait staff with low body mass indexes. Specifically, they were four times as likely to order desserts (p < .01), and they ordered 17.65% more alcoholic drinks (p < .01). These findings provide valuable evidence in recent lawsuits against weight discrimination, and it suggests to consumers who decide what they will and will not order at a restaurant — such as a salad appetizer, no dessert, and one drink — than to decide when the waiter arrives.
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The Effect of Smoking on Obesity: Evidence from a Randomized Trial
Charles Courtemanche, Rusty Tchernis & Benjamin Ukert
NBER Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
This paper aims to identify the causal effect of smoking on body mass index (BMI) using data from the Lung Health Study, a randomized trial of smoking cessation treatments. Since nicotine is a metabolic stimulant and appetite suppressant, quitting or reducing smoking could lead to weight gain. Using randomized treatment assignment to instrument for smoking, we estimate that quitting smoking leads to an average long-run weight gain of 1.5-1.7 BMI units, or 11-12 pounds at the average height. These magnitudes are considerably larger than those typically estimated by studies that do not account for the endogeneity of smoking. Our results imply that the drop in smoking in recent decades explains 14% of the concurrent rise in obesity. Semi-parametric models provide evidence of a diminishing marginal effect of smoking on BMI, while subsample regressions show that the impact is largest for younger individuals, females, those with no college degree, and those with healthy baseline BMI levels.
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Eating Healthy or Feeling Empty? How the 'Healthy=Less Filling' Intuition Influences Satiety
Jacob Suher, Rajagopal Raghunathan & Wayne Hoyer
Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, January 2016, Pages 26–40
Abstract:
To help understand the unconscious drivers of overeating, we examine the effect of health portrayals on people’s judgments of the fillingness of food. An implicit association test and two consumption studies provide evidence that people hold an implicit belief that healthy foods are less filling than unhealthy foods, an effect we label the “healthy=less filling” intuition. The consumption studies provide evidence that people order greater quantities of food, consume more of it, and are less full after consuming a food portrayed as more versus less healthy. In addition, we demonstrate a novel tactic for reversing consumers’ intuitions: highlighting the nourishing aspects of healthy food mitigates the belief that it is less filling. Taken together, these findings add to the burgeoning body of work on the psychological causes of weight-gain and obesity and points to a way of overturning the pernicious effects of the “healthy=less filling” intuition.
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Incentivizing Nutritious Diets: A Field Experiment of Relative Price Changes and How They are Framed
John Cawley et al.
NBER Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
This paper examines how consumers respond to price incentives for nutritious relative to less-nutritious foods, and whether the framing of the price incentive as a subsidy for nutritious food or a tax on non-nutritious food influences consumers’ responses. Analyzing transaction data from an 8-month randomized controlled field experiment involving 208 households, we find that a 10% relative price difference between nutritious and less nutritious food does not significantly affect overall purchases, although low-income households respond to the subsidy frame by buying more of both nutritious and less-nutritious food.
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Premium-Based Financial Incentives Did Not Promote Workplace Weight Loss In A 2013–15 Study
Mitesh Patel et al.
Health Affairs, January 2016, Pages 71-79
Abstract:
Employers commonly use adjustments to health insurance premiums as incentives to encourage healthy behavior, but the effectiveness of those adjustments is controversial. We gave 197 obese participants in a workplace wellness program a weight loss goal equivalent to 5 percent of their baseline weight. They were randomly assigned to a control arm, with no financial incentive for achieving the goal, or to one of three intervention arms offering an incentive valued at $550. Two intervention arms used health insurance premium adjustments, beginning the following year (delayed) or in the first pay period after achieving the goal (immediate). A third arm used a daily lottery incentive separate from premiums. At twelve months there were no statistically significant differences in mean weight change either between the control group (whose members had a mean gain of 0.1 pound) and any of the incentive groups (delayed premium adjustment, −1.2 pound; immediate premium adjustment, −1.4 pound; daily lottery incentive, −1.0 pound) or among the intervention groups. The apparent failure of the incentives to promote weight loss suggests that employers that encourage weight reduction through workplace wellness programs should test alternatives to the conventional premium adjustment approach by using alternative incentive designs, larger incentives, or both.
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Johanna Catherine Maclean
Industrial Relations, January 2016, Pages 122–148
Abstract:
In this study I test whether leaving school when the state unemployment rate is high persistently affects body weight. Because the time and location of school leaving are potentially endogenous, I predict the economic conditions at school leaving with instruments based on birth date and residence at age 14. My findings show that by age 40 men (women) who left school when the state unemployment rate was high have lower (higher) body weight.
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Messages from the Food Police: How Food-Related Warnings Backfire Among Dieters
Nguyen Pham, Naomi Mandel & Andrea Morales
Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, January 2016, Pages 175-190
Abstract:
This research shows when and how food-related warnings can backfire by putting consumers in a state of reactance. Across three studies, we demonstrate that dieters (but not nondieters) who see a one-sided message focusing on the negative aspects of unhealthy food (vs. a one-sided positive or neutral message) increase their desire for and consumption of unhealthy foods. In contrast, dieters who see a two-sided message (focusing on both the negative and positive aspects of unhealthy food) are more likely to comply with the message, thereby choosing fewer unhealthy foods. Our research suggests that negatively-worded food warnings (such as public service announcements) are unlikely to work – nondieters ignore them, and dieters do the opposite. Although preliminary, our findings also suggest that two-sided messages may offer a better solution.
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Constrained Total Energy Expenditure and Metabolic Adaptation to Physical Activity in Adult Humans
Herman Pontzer et al.
Current Biology, 8 February 2016, Pages 410–417
Abstract:
Current obesity prevention strategies recommend increasing daily physical activity, assuming that increased activity will lead to corresponding increases in total energy expenditure and prevent or reverse energy imbalance and weight gain. Such Additive total energy expenditure models are supported by exercise intervention and accelerometry studies reporting positive correlations between physical activity and total energy expenditure but are challenged by ecological studies in humans and other species showing that more active populations do not have higher total energy expenditure. Here we tested a Constrained total energy expenditure model, in which total energy expenditure increases with physical activity at low activity levels but plateaus at higher activity levels as the body adapts to maintain total energy expenditure within a narrow range. We compared total energy expenditure, measured using doubly labeled water, against physical activity, measured using accelerometry, for a large (n = 332) sample of adults living in five populations. After adjusting for body size and composition, total energy expenditure was positively correlated with physical activity, but the relationship was markedly stronger over the lower range of physical activity. For subjects in the upper range of physical activity, total energy expenditure plateaued, supporting a Constrained total energy expenditure model. Body fat percentage and activity intensity appear to modulate the metabolic response to physical activity. Models of energy balance employed in public health should be revised to better reflect the constrained nature of total energy expenditure and the complex effects of physical activity on metabolic physiology.
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Joerg Koenigstorfer & Hans Baumgartner
Journal of Marketing Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
People who want to control their body weight often aim to regulate both energy intake (by reducing food consumption) and energy expenditure (by increasing physical activity), thus addressing both sides of the energy balance equation. Marketers have developed fitness-branded food that may lead restrained eaters (i.e., consumers who are chronically concerned about their body weight) to believe that they can achieve these two goals at the same time by consuming the food. The purpose of this research is to investigate the effects of fitness branding in food marketing (i.e., the integration of fitness into the branding of food) on consumption and physical activity in restrained (vs. unrestrained) eaters. The authors show that fitness branding increases consumption volumes for restrained eaters unless consumers view the food as dietary forbidden. Restrained eaters are also less physically active after consuming fitness-branded food, and food consumption volumes mediate this effect in restrained eaters. Fitness branding may therefore have undesirable effects on the weight-control behaviors of restrained eaters because it discourages physical activity despite an increase in consumption, which is contrary to the principle of energy balance.