Of nannies and nudges: the current state of U.S. obesity policymaking

The Obesity Crisis as Market Failure: An Analysis of Systemic Causes and Corrective Mechanisms

“…The prestigious medical journal The Lancet, in an editorial concluded, "The obesity epidemic will not be reversed without government leadership" (The Lancet 2011, 741). This is consistent with Kersh's (2015) call to "embrace the nanny state" in this context. Ironically, solutions to the obesity problem that have much public support-CSR and education-are unlikely to be sufficiently effective.…”

“…More-over, it is unclear, even for a successful intervention, how one scales up that success without some kind of mandate? If nudges become legislated, do they "undermine active and informed citizenship," as some have claimed (Kersh 2015)? Matching the scale, scope, and fit of any possible treatment is challenging, and even renowned behavioral economists have noted that nudging may work best when aligned with other regulations or incentives (Soman 2015) and probably is not the best way to solve the obesity crisis (Loewenstein and Ubel 2010).…”

“…While we believe that the government must play the leading role in addressing the obesity crisis, there is a role for business and civil society as well. Ultimately, there is a need for a "cultural change" (Kersh 2015) in the way we as a society respond to food and its marketing. An ideal solution would probably involve strategies that food companies could pursue that are both profitable and would help reduce obesity, that is, free market solutions to the problem of obesity.…”

Nudging in screening: Literature review and ethical guidance

“…Types of screening where nudging is discussed: Nudging is discussed in a wide range of areas, such as prenatal screening [21][22][23][24][25][26][27], newborn screening [28,29], and adult screening. Nudging is also debated in areas such as screening for abdominal aorta aneurisms [14], obesity [30][31][32][33], diabetes [34,35], chronic beryllium disease [36], and HIV [21,[37][38][39]. However, the majority of references are to various types of cancer screening [40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58], predominantly breast cancer screening [2,[59][60][61][62][63][64][6...…”

Nudging and the choice architecture of offending decisions

“…Outside of criminology, informational nudges include labels for fuel economies, CO 2 emissions, and green issues (Codagnone et al, 2016) or labels for identifying the calories in food (Kersh, 2015) and the use of positive messages about the benefits of increased housing density (Doberstein, Hickey, & Li, 2016). Furthermore, Asensio and Delmas (2015) created a website sharing detailed electricity usage with messages linking this usage to environmental and health issues.…”