In 2008, Japan’s Ministry of Health passed the ‘metabo’ law and declared war against obesity. …

Japanese people are normally envied for their lean physiques. In fact, the OECD ranks them, with only 3% population obesity, one of the least obese developed countries. … Comparing the time periods 1976-1980 and 1996-2000, prevalence of obese boys and girls increased from 6.1% and 7.1% to 11.1% and 10.2%. …

The law mandates that local governments and employers add a waist measurement test to the annual mandatory check up of 40-75 year olds. For men and women who fail the test and exceed the maximum allowed waist length of 33.5 and 35.4 inches, they are required to attend a combination of counseling sessions, monitoring through phone and email correspondence, and motivational support. …

Employers or local government … are required to ensure a minimum of 65% participation, with an overall goal to cut the country’s obesity rates by 25% by year 2015. Failure to meet these goals results in fines of almost 10% of current health payments. (more)

Even before Japanese lawmakers set the waistline limits last year, the International Diabetes Federation (IDF) amended its recommended guidelines for the Japanese. The new IDF standard is 90 centimeters (35.4 inches) for men and 80 centimeters (31.5 inches) for women. But the Japanese government has yet to modify its limits. (more; HT Melanie Meng Xue)

Two interesting patterns:

1. Japanese waist limits are stricter on men, yet since men are taller health-based rules would be stricter on women.
2. The thinnest rich nation (Japan) passed a big law to make itself thinner just as the biggest medical spending nation (USA) debated a big law (Obamacare) ensuring it would spend more on medicine.

My tentative explanations:

1. Most societies find it easier to disrespect/mistreat/etc. low status men than low status women.
2. National policy is more about reaffirming and supporting symbols of national pride than about addressing national needs. The USA is proud of its medicine and Japan is proud of its thinness.

Note that that if you want to regulate health it makes far more sense to regulate weight than medicine, since weight is far more related to health than medicine.

We Brits believe that alcohol has magical powers – that it causes us to shed our inhibitions and become aggressive, promiscuous, disorderly and even violent.

But we are wrong. In high doses, alcohol impairs our reaction times, muscle control, co-ordination, short-term memory, perceptual field, cognitive abilities and ability to speak clearly. But it does not cause us selectively to break specific social rules. It does not cause us to say, “Oi, what you lookin’ at?” and start punching each other. Nor does it cause us to say, “Hey babe, fancy a shag?” and start groping each other.

The effects of alcohol on behaviour are determined by cultural rules and norms, not by the chemical actions of ethanol. There is enormous cross-cultural variation in the way people behave when they drink alcohol. … In … the vast majority of cultures, … drinking is not associated with these undesirable behaviours … Alcohol is just a morally neutral, normal, integral part of ordinary, everyday life – about on a par with, say, coffee or tea. …

This variation cannot be attributed to different levels of consumption. … Instead the variation is clearly related to different cultural beliefs about alcohol. … This basic fact has been proved time and again … in carefully controlled scientific experiments – double-blind, placebos and all. To put it very simply, the experiments show that when people think they are drinking alcohol, they behave according to their cultural beliefs about the behavioural effects of alcohol. …

Those who most strongly believe that alcohol causes aggression are the most likely to become aggressive when they think that they have consumed alcohol. … These experiments show that even when people are very drunk, if they are given an incentive (either financial reward or even just social approval) they are perfectly capable of remaining in complete control of their behaviour – of behaving as though they were totally sober. …

If I were given total power, I could very easily engineer a nation in which coffee would become a huge social problem. … I would restrict access to coffee, thus immediately giving it highly desirable forbidden-fruit status. Then I would issue lots of dire warnings about the dangerously disinhibiting effects of coffee. I would make sure everyone knew that even a mere three cups (six “units”) of coffee “can lead to anti-social, aggressive and violent behaviour”, and sexual promiscuity, thus instantly giving young people a powerful motive to binge-drink double espressos, and a perfect excuse to behave very badly after doing so. (more; HT Rob Wiblin)

Sometimes we want to behave well, and be around others who behave well, and sometimes we want to behave “badly,” and behave around others who behave badly. We also sometimes want to (often hypocritically) signal our disapproval of bad behavior, and pay costs to “do something” about it.

Our culture has coordinated to support all of these options, by coordinating to see alcohol and other “drugs” as inducing bad behavior. Clever eh? While we can signal our disapproval of bad behavior by opposing drugs, including their legalization, it is far less clear how much such actions actually reduce bad behavior. If we completely eliminated the symbolic items by which we now we identify situations where bad behavior is expected and tolerated, I expect we would quickly pick substitute symbols, and continue on with bad behavior. Because the fact is, much as we often want to signal disapproval of bad behavior, we nearly as often really enjoy behaving “badly.”

In a new book, Levinson explains how local mom-and-pop stores — with their limited selections, high prices and nonstandard packaging — paved the way for national chains like the A&P to swoop in and dominate the grocery industry. … “People get misty-eyed at the thought of the independent store — maybe it had some unique product, maybe we had more choices than we have today — but the truth was exactly the opposite.” ….

A&P … opened its first small grocery store in 1912. Unlike traditional mom-and-pop stores, the A&P had no telephone, no credit lines and no delivery options. They also had lower prices. .. “It stocked only items that were fast-sellers. … It had limited hours. It had a single employee. … Within eight years, this approach turned their company into the largest retailer in the world.” … Controlling both the retail store and the supply chain gave the A&P a huge advantage over corner grocery stores because the A&P could run the factories at a lower cost. In addition, the A&P started to bypass wholesalers and go directly to distributors for various products. …

Competitors were not happy. Efforts to limit chain stores grew in the 1920s, when states and localities began passing laws designed to help independent merchants. … “Now, you’ve got these gigantic companies like A&P dominating retailing and wholesaling and not leaving a chance for the average guy. That was the basis of the complaint.”

State laws were passed to force manufacturers to sell to all stores at the same price and to tax merchants with multiple stores in a case. An antitrust suit was also filed against the A&P, claiming that it had become a food monopoly because it controlled all aspects of manufacturing, retailing and wholesaling. But the movement lost steam in the late 1930s, when the economy started to pick up. (more)

A&P introduced major innovations, and was punished for it by the regulatory system. For now, law and policy can most help innovation by getting more out of the way. Whether it will actually do so, however, is far from obvious.

A study of New York City’s pioneering law on posting calories in restaurant chains … tracked customers at four fast-food chains — McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Burger King and Kentucky Fried Chicken — in poor neighborhoods of New York City where there are high rates of obesity.  It found that about half the customers noticed the calorie counts, which were prominently posted on menu boards. About 28 percent of those who noticed them said the information had influenced their ordering, and 9 out of 10 of those said they had made healthier choices as a result.  But when the researchers checked receipts afterward, they found that people had, in fact, ordered slightly more calories than the typical customer had before the labeling law went into effect, in July 2008. (more)

A new study involving the Taco Time fast-food chain in Washington State.  Researchers found that adding calorie counts to restaurant menus had no impact on diners’ choices.  Similar studies in New York City have recently reported conflicting results; some surveys showed that menu labeling led to fewer calories purchased, but others found no difference in meal selection. Researchers are not discouraged by the results, however, noting that providing nutritional and calorie information on menus may still benefit consumers indirectly.  As more local authorities mandate such changes, food vendors are pre-emptively modifying their menus to both lighten existing options and add healthier foods.  (Time 1/31/11, p17)

So the reason to require food nutrition labels is to scare producers into offering healthier food, with the implicit threat that if producers don’t fall into line stricter regulations will soon follow? Really? Seems to me this is more driven by a public opinion unwilling to update on the evidence. Ordinary people think labels should help, so support label laws, and the rest of the policy and political process just falls into line.

Added 31Jan:  A new paper says calorie posting at Starbucks reduced average calories per transaction by 6%.

Christopher Ruhm … examined statewide mortality fluctuations in the U.S. between 1972 and 1991 and found that a 1% rise in a state’s unemployment rate led to a 0.6% decrease in total mortality. … In a review of such studies … Stephen Bezruchka … suggests the results could be explained by declines in smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and overeating during recessions as people look for ways to save money.

NBER today:

A higher risk of unemployment is associated with reduced consumption of fruits and vegetables and increased consumption of “unhealthy” foods such as snacks and fast food. … Among individuals predicted to be at highest risk of being unemployed, a one percentage point increase in the resident state’s unemployment rate is associated with … a 2-4% reduction in the frequency of fruits and vegetables consumption, and an 8% reduction in the consumption of salad.

Either we can cross “eat healthier” off the list of possible ways unemployment helps health, or maybe fruits and veggies aren’t as healthy, and fast food as unhealthy, as we suppose.

~5 century BC: Roman civilization is a strong patriarchy, fathers … have absolute authority over the family.
~1 century BC: … Material wealth is astounding, … Romans enjoy the arts … democracy, commerce, science, human rights, animal rights, children rights and women become emancipated. No-fault divorce is enacted, and quickly becomes popular by the end of the century.
~1-2 century AD: … Men refuse to marry and the government tries to revive marriage with a “bachelor tax”, to no avail. … Roman women show little interest in raising their own children and frequently use nannies. The wealth and power of women grows very fast, while men become increasingly demotivated and engage in prostitution and vice. Prostitution and homosexuality become widespread.
~3-4 century AD: … Roman population declines due to below-replacement birth-rate. Vice and massive corruption are rampant. (more; HT Roissy)

Yes this exaggerates, but the key point remains: a sudden burst in productivity and wealth lead to big cultural changes that made the Greek-Roman world and its cultural descendants more forager-like than the rest of the farmer world. These changes helped clear the way for big cultural changes of the industrial revolution.

These cultural changes included not more political egalitarianism, but also more forager like attitudes toward alchohol and mating:

Historically, we find a correlation between the shift from polygyny to monogamy and the growth of alcohol consumption. Cross-culturally we also find that monogamous societies consume more alcohol than polygynous societies in the preindustrial world. … Studies find a positive relationship between alcohol use on the one hand and a more promiscuous and high-risk sexual behavior on the other hand. … The Greek and Roman empires … were the only (and first) to introduce formal monogamy. … Hunting tribes drink more than agricultural and settled tribes. … Hunting tribes … have more monogamous marriage arrangements than agricultural tribes. …

The emergence of socially imposed formal monogamy in Greece coincides with (a) the growth of “chattel slavery” (where men can have sex with female slaves) and (b) the extension of political rights. … The industrial revolution played a key role in the shift from formal to effective monogamy and in the sharp increase of alcohol consumption (more; HT Tyler)

This roughly fits my simple story: forager to farmer and back to forager with industry. The key is to see monogomous marraige as an intermediate form between low-commitment feeling-based forager mating, and wives-as-property-for-live farmer polygamy. Let me explain.

Forager work and mating is more intuitive, less institutional. Mates stay together mainly because they feel like it; there is more an open compeition to seduce mates, and there’s a lot of sneaking around. Foragers drink alchohol when they can, and spontaneous feelings count for more relative to formal commitments. The attitude is more that if you can’t hold her interest, you don’t deserve to keep her. Men show off abilities to obtain resources mainly to signal attractive qualities; most resources acquired must be shared with the rest of the band.

Farmers, in contrast, don’t share much, and are far more unequal in the resources they control, by which they can more directly “buy” wives. Farmer wives so bought are supposed to be committed to their husbands even when they don’t feel like it. Marriage was less about mutal attraction and more about building households and clans. Husbands worry about cheating wives, and so try to limit access and temptations, which includes alchohol. Musicians and artists are also suspect if they excite wives’ passions, which might lead to cheating.

When empires like Greece and Rome achieved sustained periods of prosperity, their elites reverted to more forager-like ways. They had more drinking and art, more egalitarian politics, fertility fell, and [non-slave] mating became more egalitarian and about feelings. If a bit of alchohol was enough to get your wife cheat to on you, well maybe you didn’t deserve her. The Greek-Roman move from polygamy to monogamy was a move in the direction of more forager-like feeling-based mating, though it retained farmer-like lifelong commitment.

The Greeks and Romans became models for Europe when industry made it rich again. In our era, fertility has fallen far, divorce and out-of-wedlock births are common, and alchohol, drugs, and sneaking about are more tolerated. Women need men less for their resources, and choose them more on other grounds. Dropping the lifelong commitment element of marriage, and often the expectation of any sort of marriage commitment, we have moved even further away from farmer wives-as-lifelong-property and toward forager “promiscuity.”

Added: Razib Khan and Jason elaborate.

Added 1Feb: A new study says that in places where marriages are more arranged by parents, there is more mate-guarding. Discouraging alcohol seems a reasonable mate-guarding strategy.

38% of [young female philosophers] reported having eaten the meat of a mammal at their previous evening meal — a rate not statistically different from the 39% reported rate among respondents overall. … Similarly, despite the difference in normative view, there was no statistically detectable difference in the mean age of respondents who said they had eaten the meat of a mammal at their previous evening’s meal. … 78% of those who reported that they never eat mammal meat said eating mammal meat is bad, compared to 32% of those who reported sometimes eating meat. However, it seems that among non-vegetarians there is little if any relationship between normative ethical view and actual meat consumption. (more; HT Stefano Bertolo)

So why, among all the moral issues on which one could be hypocritical, and people which could be hypocritical, is the observed worst case young female philosophers on eating meat?

This of course seems to be the median result for all randomized studies which try to improve people: no effect.

In the recent Fast Food episode of Penn & Teller’s Bullshit!, Brian Wansink of the Cornell Food & Brand Lab was shown separately asking two different groups to estimate the calories in a western chicken salad they had just eaten. Those told correctly that it was from Taco Bell correctly estimated its 970 calories, while those who were told it came from “California Garden Cafe; Gourmet garden-fresh cuisine” guessed about half as many calories.  Since one of main anti-fast-food proposals is for clearly-marked calorie counts on menus, this lab result suggests such proposals would hurt non-fast-food places more.  Anyone know how robust is this lab result, or if the proposals apply equally to all food sales?

[Some] asked why I compare cryonics (unfavorably) to acts of charity, rather than comparing other acts of personal consumption (I enjoy the gelato here in Berlin) to charity. My view is this: the decision to have one’s head frozen is not primarily instrumental but rather expressive. Look at the skewed demographics of the people who do it, namely highly intelligent male readers of science fiction, often with tech jobs. … It’s a chance to stand for something and in a way which sets them apart … for instrumental rationality, for Science, … for the conquering of limits, … and for the notion that the subject sees hidden possiblities and resources which more traditional observers do not. …

People interested in cryonics are often highly meritorious. … So I’m … happy to endorse laissez-faire for the practice but still I don’t find myself settling into really liking the idea. … The world would be better off, and the relative status of the virtuous nerds higher, if instead the cryonics customers sent more signals which were perceived as running contrary to type. Ignoring cryonics, and promoting charity, would do more to raise the status of intelligence and analytical thinking than does cryonics.

Tyler’s argument is hard to follow here. Is he merely saying the world is better if anyone acts more contrary to type, expresses less relative to instrumenting, or donates more to charity? If so, why pick on cryonics and tech nerds in particular, why not just rail in general against all expressing, typed-acts, and non-charity? If the argument is that the world gains unusually more from tech nerds acting against type, expressing less, and giving to charity, then we need to hear an argument for that. It certainly seems odd to complain that tech nerds, usually critiqued for being overly practical, are actually overly expressive.

Let’s be concrete. Tyler goes way out of his way to be, and call attention to his being, a “foodie” – his eating a gelato in Berlin, and then mentioning on his blog, clearly has a big expressive component. Being a foodie lets Tyler join a high status community and stand for art, culture, etc. in a way that sets him apart and supports the notion he can see hidden food quality that the rest of us do not see. (I like “great” food, but honestly not much more than ordinary food.) Does Tyler think the world would be equally better off if foodies were to act contrary to type, express less via buying less fancy food, and give the difference to charity? If so, why has he never mentioned it in his hundreds of food posts?

Could it be Tyler knows that tech nerds are low status in our society and fair game for criticism? Is this really any different than rich folks complaining about inner city kids who buy $100 sneakers instead of saving their money or giving it to charity, even while they buy $1000 suits and dresses instead of saving their money or giving it to charity?

Added:  Tyler responds, sort of.

PLoS Medicine:

While we continue to be interested in analyses of ways of reducing tobacco use, we will no longer be considering papers where support, in whole or in part, for the study or the researchers comes from a tobacco company.

Eric Crampton:

As good a [bias] case can be made … against tobacco industry funding. How many anti-tobacco public health researchers would be able to continue getting grants from Ministries of Health if their research found that smoking isn’t as bad as the Ministry might have thought?

John Tierney:

Many scientists, journal editors and journalists see themselves as a sort of priestly class untainted by commerce. … This snobbery was codified by the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2005, when it … refused to publish such work unless there was at least one author with no ties to the industry who would formally vouch for the data.  That policy … looked especially dubious after a team of academic researchers (not financed by industry) analyzed dozens of large-scale clinical trials in previous decades and reported that industry-sponsored ones met significantly higher standards than the nonindustry ones.

More:

As Gary Taubes nicely illustrates in his book, “Good Calories, Bad Calories,” scientists who disagreed with the accepted wisdom on the evils of fat in the diet were accused of being corrupted by industry grants even if they had received most of their money from government agencies that were looking — unsuccessfully — for evidence to back the fat-is-bad theory. Meanwhile, scientists who went along with the conventional wisdom on fat weren’t criticized for the corporate money they’d received from food companies.

Mr. Taubes has also found some wonderful examples of selective journalism in the dispute over sugar’s health effect: An article stressing the harms of sugar would make dissenting scientists look bad by stressing their connections to the sugar industry, whereas an article exonerating sugar would make the other side’s scientists look bad by stressing the money they received from companies making sugar substitutes. …

“Scientists were believed to be free of conflicts if their only source of funding was a federal agency, but all nutritionists knew that if their research failed to support the government position on a particular subject, the funding would go instead to someone whose research did.” … Not-for-profit advocacy groups … “are rarely if ever accused of conflicts of interest, even though their entire reason for existence is to argue one side of a controversy as though it were indisputable.”

If the new principle is that we mustn’t publish research not funded by groups committed to proving our official beliefs, how long before “our” beliefs exclude yours?  How long before interdisciplinary journals like Science or Nature refuse to publish papers by economists, known for their suspiciously right-wing leanings, unless non-economist co-authors vouch for them?  Do you really think that can’t happen?