Comments on: Lunch Line Design Utilizing Constraints and Bottlenecks to Prevent Childhood Obesity

By: Jayadeep Purushothaman

Jayadeep Purushothaman — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 06:21:48 +0000

What they really need is “trimming” technique – get rid of the milk and soda! But I think this is just a case of tuning the symptoms instead of finding the root cause!

By: Julien Couvreur

Julien Couvreur — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:36:07 +0000

Those nudging experiments are really interesting, but I worry that our understanding of metabolism and diet are poorer than we admit, thereby causing more harm than good by those nutrition advice and influence.

For example, is it consumption of fat and lack of physical exercise that cause obesity, diabetes and heart diseases? Or is it high consumption of sugars and refined carbohydrates (which cause insulin-resistance, which leads to the above problems)?

Gary Taubes surveyed the medical literature and found little evidence for the former and better evidence for the latter. Yet nutrition officials still fight against fat and promote grains…
He summarized what he found in a recent interview (and he also has a book and other videos online): http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/11/taubes_on_fat_s.html

Btw, Dan Ariely posted about another such “nudge” experiment just two weeks ago: http://danariely.com/2012/02/08/an-alternative-to-calorie-labels/

By: dan markovitz

dan markovitz — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:43:05 +0000

Pete,

Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein wrote about this kind of subtle behavioral adjustment in their book, “Nudge.” It’s the thinking behind having employees by default opted-in to retirement plans. I hadn’t heard of this example, however.