61. Does This Recession Make Me Look Fat?

[0] From APM, American Public Media and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace.

[1] Here's the host of Marketplace, Hi -Risdahl.

[2] Time now for a little bit of Freakonomics Radio, that moment in the broadcast every couple of weeks where we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co -author of the books and the blog of the same name.

[3] It is the hidden side of everything.

[4] And, Dubner, you know what?

[5] I'm especially glad to have you back this week.

[6] You know why?

[7] I know why.

[8] You sent me something.

[9] I love it when you sent me things.

[10] I sent you.

[11] What can I tell you?

[12] tell you, I'm a benevolent kind of fella.

[13] That's right.

[14] So go ahead, Kai.

[15] Open up your little package.

[16] All right, here we go.

[17] All right, it's a little bubble wrap envelope with an envelope inside.

[18] Very careful.

[19] Very careful.

[20] Okay, so it's back of Marlboros.

[21] And I don't smoke, dude.

[22] Believe it or not, I'm trying to help you stay trim.

[23] All right?

[24] So I want you to listen to Kip Vescuci, who's an economist at Vanderbilt, who studies smoking.

[25] All right.

[26] Well, one thing is that if you give up smoking, you'll gain some weight.

[27] May not be enough to make you morbidly obese, but it'll make you a little heavier.

[28] All right.

[29] So here's the hidden side, right?

[30] It's the unintended consequences of giving up smoke.

[31] You are learning, my friend, Kai.

[32] So how long have we been doing this segment?

[33] A couple of years, but you're getting there, you know.

[34] So our smoking rate in this country has been falling dramatically, which is fantastic news.

[35] But there's a hidden side to that as with everything.

[36] Now, listen, I am not saying that smoking is a good way to fight weight gain.

[37] Let me be clear, okay?

[38] It is not.

[39] And smoking is bad for you.

[40] But this is an instructive lesson about tradeoffs because I want to talk today about another weight -related tradeoff having to do with our economy.

[41] So, Kai, let me ask you this question.

[42] What do you think that the Great Recession has done to our collective waste line?

[43] Yeah, okay.

[44] I'm going to go with my God.

[45] It's a bad thing, right?

[46] Because people are going to McDonald's for the dollar menu and all that stuff, right?

[47] And thus, we're getting fatter.

[48] That is a fantastic guess.

[49] And you might even be right this time.

[50] Usually with you, I'm wrong.

[51] But anyway.

[52] Usually you are, but some research suggests that you may be right.

[53] But there's other research that suggests the opposite.

[54] So let me play the opposite.

[55] Here's Christopher Room, who's an economist at the University of Virginia.

[56] Okay.

[57] What we've learned over the last decade or so is an initially surprising fact that when times are bad, people get healthier over many dimensions.

[58] And one of those appears to be obesity.

[59] So that, for example, if my income is down, I don't go out to eat as often.

[60] and meals eaten out of the home are probably less healthy and more caloric.

[61] All right.

[62] Makes sense on its face, but I'm still not convinced.

[63] Well, you know, here's the thing.

[64] Obesity is one of those problems that has a lot of different causes, right?

[65] And not all of them are obvious.

[66] You were right to focus on the relationship between dollars and calories.

[67] That is incredibly important to consider.

[68] I mean, think about this.

[69] For the vast majority of human civilization, it was a big struggle for us to provide enough affordable calories for everyone.

[70] But over the past few generations, we have gotten very, very good, particularly rich nations, like ours, at making calories abundant and delicious and cheap.

[71] The markets have given us exactly what we wanted, and now we're dealing with a side effect.

[72] Well, so are you saying then we should intervene in the markets and make those calories more expensive?

[73] I mean...

[74] Well, look, I'm not a big intervener kind of guy, but that's the right question to ask.

[75] So let's go back to your cigarettes that I sent you, okay, and talk about how the incentives work.

[76] That pack I sent you cost, believe it or not, 12 bucks here in New York City.

[77] No way, really?

[78] And about half of that was taxes.

[79] Now, economists generally agree that cigarette taxes have helped drive down smoking.

[80] So if you raise the price of cigarettes a little bit, consumption falls.

[81] And that is why, if you want to talk about obesity now, some people like the idea of a fat tax, which is a tax on fat foods, not fat people, by the way.

[82] And they've tried this in Denmark and Hungary, and there's some talk of trying it here.

[83] Yeah, but that's never going to fly, right?

[84] It is a classic regressive tax.

[85] It would hit harder low -income people than high -income people, which makes it tough.

[86] Another tough sell is to change the food subsidies coming out of Washington, right?

[87] So there's billions of subsidy dollars that now go to corn and wheat and soy, none of which are bad in and of themselves.

[88] But products of those get turned into very, very, very cheap additives in junk food.

[89] So one argument is that we should shift those subsidies toward things like, you know, fruits and vegetables.

[90] So it's cheaper to eat healthier.

[91] Which makes sense.

[92] All right.

[93] So do me a favor next time you send me something?

[94] Yeah.

[95] Make it fruits or vegetables or beer, actually, would be good, too.

[96] You could send more beer.

[97] Light beer.

[98] No, no, not light beer.

[99] But that's all another segment.

[100] Stephen Dobner, Freakonomics .com, is the website.

[101] He's back in a couple of weeks.

[102] See ya.

[103] My pleasure, Kai.

[104] Thank you.