Incentives, Not Punishments

... are the best response to the obesity problem, argues David Gratzer in the Washington Times:

In the British “pounds for pounds” experiment, about 400 people were paid to lose weight. On average, the program cost about $300 per participant. Forty-four percent of participants finished the year with “medically significant” weight loss, and nearly one-quarter of the group averaged 25 pounds. lost. True, the experiment had a high dropout rate, but it’s hard not to conclude that the results are better than anything expected from a fat tax.

The American study tested a variety of financial incentives on a group of veterans, finding that “incentives produced significant weight loss over an eight-month intervention.” The catch? Participants tended to regain the weight after the incentives had ended. But that’s no deal-breaker because it should be possible to design longer-term incentives. For example, Safeway’s Health Measures program offers annual cash incentives for healthy behavior for its employees.