Letters
more, Please
The articles on obesity and wellness in the
January/February 2010
issue are steps in the
right direction but very
small steps. Barry Hall
(“Workplace Wellness:
Calculated Risk Reduction”) provides multiple
graphs of employers’ “
reported” trend reductions.
Wouldn’t it be better to
review the actual studies?
These types of studies
have had severe credibility problems because of a
lack of consistent baseline
comparisons. And I would
really like to see the ones that reported
greater than 10 percent. Maybe that type
of detail exists, but without it, the article
is mostly impression, not demonstration.
Sam Gutterman (“Growing Up Obese:
A National Health Challenge”) supplies a
dizzying array of fat stats but only vague
generalizations about what to do about
the problem. If there’s anything our governments do well, it’s tax. Let’s have the
Food and Drug Administration tax high-fat foods and subsidize low-fat foods. This
concept became crystal clear to me when
fat-free potato chips came out priced $1 a
bag more than regular chips. The financial incentive was so counterintuitive.
Our public schools are fond of having
“no child left behind,” but that doesn’t
apply to sports. School sports are clearly
elitist, providing extreme benefits to the
small number of students who can make
the jump to the next level. Significant
government spending is needed to expand sports and exercise for the other 95
percent. Those participatory programs
must be extended to colleges and the
adult population as well.
Mr. Gutterman has brief references to
TV and video games, but let’s be clear:
Billions are being spent to directly
or indirectly promote a sedentary
lifestyle, and that trend
is increasing. We need a
similar level of spending to
make the social change
away from a nation of
couch potatoes.
Editor’s Note: Separate links, to the study
on which Barry Hall’s
piece was based and to
the longer and more detailed paper from which
Sam Gutterman adapted
his feature, were printed
at the end of each article.
intelligent distinctions
With regard to Tia Goss Sawhney’s article(“Lives Well-Lived: Socioeconomic Status and Mortality,” March/
April), there may be something more
basic than socioeconomic status that
differs between groups.
Consider education and mortality
experience. You may be confusing the
driver (number of years of education)
with more relevant variables such as
conscientiousness and/or intelligence.
It’s easier (and less controversial) for
an insurance company to underwrite
or market based on education, so it
may not be in its interest to dig deeper.
But one quick way to test the intelligence question would be to compare
mortality by college major from the
same tier of colleges. In general, the
mathematical sciences and engineering have more stringent admissions
(and passing) requirements than
departments such as education or
communication. You would need a relatively large group to reduce variability
within a population, but it would be an
interesting comparison to make.
Another question to consider is who
are the underlying populations? Before
my grandparents’ generation (born in
the 1920s), relatively few people went
to college. It’s only with the baby boom
generation that you can measure the
impact of widespread college acces-
sibility. Then you have to consider the
driver of trying to avoid the draft in the
U.S., at least in extending years in school
for young men, which would have been
different from the driver for college in
my generation.
