Obesity - a market success: economic growth versus girth growth

Economists tell us that we try to attain maximum happiness given our income, time and other resources. They tell us that we are essentially rational beings. But we are also highly impressionable, and the market plays on this to sell its products, to the extent that it is also a major driver behind girth growth not only economic growth.

If we are to even flatten out our current rates of increasing overweight and obesity, it would seem that we either have to sell a lot more products that encourage us to be active (active transport, gym and activity memberships, effective diets) and eat and drink healthily (nutritious, non-energy dense foods and beverages). Or do we have to intervene somehow in the market. A fat tax, an oil tax, a congestion tax? We need the advice of some enlightened economists.

Some people hope for the obesity pill, and it will no doubt be a huge seller and money spinner if it is effective. Inactivity however, is the main problem, not obesity itself - we know it's better to be fat and fit rather than thin and inactive.

There is an irony, in that it may well be our economic success that underlies the first predictions of decreased life expectancy in 1,000 years. If the status quo is maintained, the success of the market will continue to compel us to be less and less active, and we will continue to be like a footy grand final, with a 100,000 people who need more exercise watching 36 who don’t.

The solutions lie not only with Mr Abbott and Ms Pike but with Mr Costello and Mr Brumby and a future winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics.