Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Soda Tax

I watched Family Feud the other day. The survey asked 100 people to name a food or drink some say is bad but others say is good for you.

The guy on the show said "soda" which, shockingly, got 22 votes in the survey.

Maybe they were referring to this:

In addition to more recent medical studies, she cites research by Robert Fogel, the Nobel laureate in economics, on height and weight in different countries over many years. He found that overweight [but no obese] people often lived longer. For people in their seventies and beyond, Ms. Kolata explains, “having a bit of extra fat appears to be protective, stimulating the body to make more muscle and more bone.”

from David Leonhardts discussion of a soda tax.

When I mention this relationship between weight and life expectancy to people they say I'm full of shit. I wonder why people are so convinced their intuitions about nutrition are so good when the evidence is so inconclusive about so many specifics (e.g. multivitamins).

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