Regional obesity determinants in the United States: a model of myopic addictive behavior in food consumption
Obesity is considered one of the largest public health problems in the United States today. The premise for our study is a body of results from medical research showing that sweetened foods, i.e., an increased consumption of sugars, leads first to sugar addiction and second to carbohydrate addiction and increased consumption of fats. The latter feature is actually responsible for the increase in body mass index (BMI), but the trigger that produces cravings for extra calories is sugar and sweeteners. Based on our results, a myopic model of addictive behavior in food consumption seems to capture the food consuming habits and related outbreak of obesity among the American population. Our results indicate that lower current and past real prices of sugar contribute significantly to higher values of BMI, and increase the likelihood of becoming obese in the United States. Copyright (c)2008 International Association of Agricultural Economists.
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the proper application to view it first. In case of further problems read the IDEAS help page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Volume (Year): 38 (2008)
Issue (Month): 3 (05)
Pages: 375-384
| Handle: | RePEc:bla:agecon:v:38:y:2008:i:3:p:375-384 |
| Contact details of provider: | Web page: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0169-5150 Email: More information through EDIRC
|
| Order Information: | Web: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/subs.asp?ref=0169-5150 |
No references listed on IDEAS
You can help add them by filling out this form.