Posts Tagged ‘behavioral economics’

Nudging the behavior of consumers seems like an appealing strategy for overcoming the rise in obesity and the harm it is causing to population health. Apply a little behavioral psychology and voilà! People make healthier choices. The appeal is so strong that the UK government is counting on supermarket nudges to overcome obesity and save […]

A sea change in what people want to buy. This is what food companies that depend on making money from chips and other snacks are seeing. Some brush it off as consumers becoming more “value-conscious” in the face of economic uncertainty. But others are getting to work on figuring out how to cope as they […]

A fascinating debate is unfolding in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). It’s mostly about publication bias, but the bottom line question is not so esoteric. Can a nudge make meaningful behavior change happen in a wide variety of situations? Late last year, Stephanie Mertens and colleagues published a meta-analysis of nudging […]

Bless their hearts. Really. We know they mean well. Three health policy gurus have a new viewpoint in JAMA Pediatrics on childhood obesity treatment. They explain “how children and families make daily obesity-related decisions.” Because they’re “not rational.” So you have to “keep it simple” for them. Thus, behavioral economics can provide a wonderful little […]

Using a small spoon might be a useful tool for preventing weight gain and obesity. That’s the claim you’ll find at the end of a new study in the British Journal of Nutrition. Like many other little nudges, smaller spoons seem to have have an impact on eating behaviors. But like the metaphor of a […]

It’s an easy trap. Prevention is a cherished goal for childhood obesity. Behavioral economics has such a strong cachet that it just earned Richard Thaler a Nobel Prize. So when elegant research that says little nudges – like a sticker on a piece of fruit – can lead children to make better food choices, we want to […]

Last week it was the biological clocks that rule our metabolism. This week it’s the economics of little nudges in everyday choices – like what to eat. For bringing economic and behavioral sciences together, Richard Thaler has won the Nobel Prize in economics. Thaler explained how people make decisions that do not always seem rational. He […]

Small packages can yield big results for changing food consumption. That’s the word from a new, exhaustive evidence review published by the highly respected Cochrane Collaboration. Researchers led by Gareth Hollands analyzed 72 studies over the last 35 years and found that smaller portions, packages, and tableware consistently lead people to consume less food and drink. […]

The politics of obesity messages — how the problem is framed — determines how different segments of the public will respond to calls for action. New research from the University of Minnesota, Johns Hopkins, and Cornell adds to our understanding that political ideology shapes our view of obesity. Sarah Gollust and colleagues looked at different […]

Irrationality describes many aspects of healthcare and health behaviors that create vexing problems for health policymakers. Label a food “healthy” and people will consume it in unhealthy quantities. People will insist on getting prescriptions and tests they might not need, but all too often, they don’t follow through with needed tests and prescriptions. Douglas Hough […]