Freakonomics Radio - 61. Does This Recession Make Me Look Fat?

Episode Date: February 8, 2012

A look at some non-obvious ways to lose weight.

From APM, American Public Media, and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace. Here's the host of Marketplace, Ty Rizdahl. Time now for a little bit of Freakonomics Radio, that moment in the broadcast every couple of weeks where we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and the blog of the same name. It is the hidden side of everything. And Dubner, you know what? I'm especially glad to have you back this week. You know why? I know why. You do. I know. You sent me something. I love it when you send me things. I sent you something. What can I tell you? I'm a benevolent kind of fella.

That's right. So go ahead, Kyle. Open up your little package. All right. Here we go. All right. It's a little bubble wrap envelope with an envelope inside. Very careful. Very careful. Okay. So it bubble wrap envelope with an envelope inside. Very careful. Very careful. Okay. So it's back of Marlboros. It is. And I don't smoke, dude.

Believe it or not, I'm trying to help you stay trim. All right. So I want you to listen to Kip Viscousi, who's an economist at Vanderbilt who studies smoking. All right. Well, one thing is that if you give up smoking, you'll gain some weight. It may not be enough to make you morbidly obese, but it will make you a little heavier. All right. So here's the hidden side, right? It's the unintended consequences of giving up smoking.

You are learning, my friend, Kai. So here's the thing. How long have we been doing this segment? A couple of years, but you're getting there. So our smoking rate in this country has been falling dramatically, which is fantastic news. But there's a hidden side to that. Of course. It's with everything.

Now, listen, I am not saying that smoking is a good way to fight weight gain. Let me be clear, okay? It is not, and smoking is bad for you. But this is an instructive lesson about trade-offs, because I want to talk today about another weight-related trade-off having to do with our economy. So, Kai, let me ask you this question. What do you think that the Great Recession has done to our collective waistline? Yeah, OK. I'm going to go with my gut. It's a bad thing, right?

Because people are going to McDonald's for the dollar menu and all that stuff, right? And thus we're getting fatter. That is a fantastic guess. And you might even be right this time. Usually with you I'm wrong, but anyway. Usually you are. But some research suggests that you may be right. But there's other research that suggests the opposite.

So let me play the opposite. Here's Christopher Room, who's an economist at the University of Virginia. What we've learned over the last decade or so is an initially surprising fact that when times are bad, people get healthier over many dimensions. And one of those appears to be obesity. So that, for example, if my income is down, I don't go out to eat as often. And meals eaten out of the home are probably less healthy and more caloric. All right. Makes sense on its face, but I'm still not convinced. Well, here's the thing. Obesity is one of those problems that has a lot of different causes, right? And not all of them are obvious. You were right to focus on the relationship between dollars and calories.

That is incredibly important to consider. I mean, think about this. For the vast majority of human civilization, it was a big struggle for us to provide enough affordable calories for everyone. But over the past few generations, we have gotten very, very good, particularly rich nations like ours, at making calories abundant and delicious and cheap. The markets have given us exactly what we wanted, and now we are dealing with a side effect. Well, so are you saying then we should intervene in the markets and make those calories more expensive? I mean – Well, look, I'm not a I'm not a big intervener kind of guy, but that's the right question to ask. Let's go back to your cigarettes

that I sent you. OK, and talk about how the incentives work. That pack I sent you cost, believe it or not, 12 bucks here in New York. No way. Really? And about half of that was taxes. Now, economists generally agree that cigarette taxes have helped drive down smoking. So if you raise the price of cigarettes a little bit, consumption falls. And that is why, if you want to talk about obesity now, some people like the idea of a fat tax, which is a tax on fat foods, not fat people, by the way. And they've tried this in Denmark and Hungary, and there's some talk of trying it here. Yeah, but that's never going to fly, right? It is a classic regressive tax.

It would hit harder low-income people than high-income people, which makes it tough. Another tough sell is to change the food subsidies coming out of Washington, right? So there's billions of subsidy dollars that now go to corn and wheat and soy, none of which are bad in and of themselves, but products of those get turned into very, very, very cheap additives in junk food. So one argument is that we should shift those subsidies toward things like fruits and vegetables so it's cheaper to eat healthier.

Which makes sense. All right. So do me a favor next time you send me something. Yeah. Make it fruits or vegetables or beer actually would be good too. You could send more beer. Light beer. It's on the way.

No, no, not light beer, but that's a whole other segment. Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics.com is the website. He's back in a couple of weeks. Light beer. It's on the way. No, no, not light beer, but that's a whole other segment. Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics.com is the website. He's back in a couple of weeks. See you. My pleasure, Kai. Thank you.