MLI Research Advisory Board Member William Watson highlights the weak points of a recent OECD report on obesity in today’s Financial Post. Commenting on “Fit not fat: Obesity and the economics of prevention”, Watson writes:
The study comes with a heaping side order of data, all of it focused on what the report repeatedly calls the “epidemic” of obesity in rich countries.
He correctly diagnoses the difficulty with this sort of public policy targeted at the unintelligent design that is the human psyche. People who are overweight know that they are – and still do nothing about it. Watson concludes,
If people are irrational, can we really trust governments to enforce rationality on their behalf ? The rational government is even more of a stretch than the rational individual …
Canadian health ministers have already started to regulate the amount of salt in our diets. You just know the fat police can’t be far behind.
Posted by George Young
