There’s no doubt about it. We’re getting fatter. The percentage of obese adults has just about doubled since 1960. Americans, apparently, are a little heavy on the “calories in” and a little light on the “calories out.”

Perhaps this isn’t surprising. The food we eat is easier to prepare, cheaper, and more plentiful. We also have more disposable income, and we dispose of that income in restaurants more often than ever before. Today’s average American spends about 46 percent of his or her food budget in restaurants and on takeout food. And we exercise less. The free exercise provided through manual labor fifty years ago is now replaced (or often not) by leisure time exercise with costs in both money and time away from other activities.

So what should we do about it, and should government play a role? While on leave from the Harris School, Professor Tomas Philipson recently served as the senior economic advisor to then FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan. Philipson is a noted expert on obesity in America and was asked to sit on an FDA working group on obesity. The goal was to arrive at a set of recommendations that could help consumers trim down and be healthier(1). Philipson contributed to the panel’s recommendations for restaurants to add more nutritional and calorie information to menus. The panel also made recommendations for enforcing the accuracy in food labels and weight-loss claims; for more education on weight and nutrition; and for giving more prominence to calories on food labels.

Although the recommendations are laudable, and the public health community is pressing for more work on obesity, Philipson would be the first to argue that government should not be in the business of addressing obesity.

“Clearly it’s a health problem,” he says, “but whether there’s a clear rationale for government in solving obesity is debatable.”

“Usually when economists pose a question such as whether government should intervene, they’re looking for things government can solve that the private sector or private choices cannot.”

In this case, private choices, such as spending on gym dues, surgery, or diet books, he argues, are likely much more effective. “It’s not a lack of information,” requiring more government education or food labels. “It’s an issue of personal incentives. Food is cheaper, our jobs are more sedentary, and we don’t exercise because there’s a cost—in gym dues, in time away from our children, and in lower wages if we take one of those jobs that involve manual labor.”

“We have to ask, are the costs truly higher than the benefits” of cheaper food and more productive, albeit sedentary, lives?

The academic community has not taken up the question of “why this health problem should receive more attention than other health problems,” says Philipson. “In a sense, you’re taking money away from something else, like cancer research. The opportunity costs of the funds going toward obesity prevention—even if they saved a million lives— could be used better to save five million lives from cancer, for example. The question is how to spend the money most productively.”

Barbara Ray

(1) Visit www.fda.gov/oc/initiatives/obesity/backgrounder.html.