Neil Seeman2013-05-21T07:25:05-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.ca/author/index.php?author=neil-seemanCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Neil SeemanGood old fashioned elbow grease.The Danger of Taking Facebook "Likes" Too Seriouslytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.31575832013-04-26T18:11:25-04:002013-04-26T18:11:31-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/Dennis S. O'Leary once said, "is that it can be a loaded gun: dangerous if misused and at least threatening if pointed in the wrong direction." Today, in the era of social media and "Big Data", researchers and consultants salivate because: a) data (e.g. 'likes,' tweets, 'shares', bit.ly links) are freely available and easy to measure; and b) clients and governments have been primed for decades to believe the more data, the better their decisions.
As Gary Marcus of New York University and my colleague Eric Meerkamper and I have argued, the ability to capture more and more data -- "Hey, we've got a quintillion bytes! How much do you have?" -- is a flawed investment model for a subset of faddish Venture Capitalists in Silicon Valley more enamored by data size than by data quality. Yes, testosterone, not logic, is at play here.
The strangest example of measurement misfire comes in the form of Facebook studies. Beware any study that measures "Likes" and correlates them to anything of significance, notably anything to do with healthcare. The capacity to game "Likes" has long been proven. My colleague and I received one "Like" on our 2011 policy book on obesity policy (drawing on data from over 100 countries), used at Harvard and in syllabi around the world. Our book received global media acclaim, award nominations and sales. I felt bad about our Facebook flop until I learned that the best-selling author in the same category, David Kessler, had received no "Likes"!
Facebook, lest I remind readers, is a game, originally designed to compare the beauty of freshman women at Harvard. To suggest that the number of "Likes" that an attractive young woman, subjectively defined, correlated in any manner or form with her intelligence or studiousness, is absurd. What would be a statistical certainty is that one could correlate her presumed beauty with something. Correlations, as any undergraduate student knows, do not equal cause, especially in the era of Big Data, where the size of the data can generate correlations that may be the precise opposite to the truth.
In one of the oddest of such recent Facebook studies, published in the American Journal of Medical Quality by Alex Timian and colleagues at the Healthcare Innovation and Technology Lab, a quantitative analysis of the Facebook pages of 40 New York hospitals was used to determine whether Facebook "Likes" were associated with hospital quality and patient satisfaction. Results suggested that hospitals with lower 30-day mortality rates received more "Likes"; and those with more "Likes" were more likely to be recommended by patients. Both relationships were statistically significant, suggesting that the number of "Likes" may be used as a proxy for patient satisfaction and an indicator of hospital quality.
I know a little about hospital indicators, academic publishing and a little about the Internet.
Rule 1: Publish a study or press release about a study and use the word "Facebook" in the title and you are guaranteed media publicity. To wit: A press release once mistakenly correlated the number of Facebook mentions in divorce proceedings to suggest that Facebook was causally related to actual divorce rates (1 in 5 Divorces Caused by Facebook!). This media-grabbing strategy is effective for public relations.
The study to which I am now referring, on hospital quality and "Likes", was, in fact, distributed to me by the $48 billion tax-payer funded Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, as if it were of grand global significance to data researchers.
Rule 2: 30-day mortality rates vary vastly for heart attack for complex and unknown reasons. Most hospitals do not have active Facebook pages. Some do. Since patient satisfaction measures, using many types of measurement, are prone to ceiling and floor effects -- often suggesting that a hospital will receive a high patient satisfaction score (say, 90%) -- any statistically significant correlation between more "Likes" and higher satisfaction scores in New York area-hospitals is, on its face, a questionable hypothesis.
Rule 3: Facebook users are a subset of a subset of a subset of hospital users. They are generally younger, healthier and more active than typical hospital users. People who hit the "Like" button on a hospital do so for all sorts of reasons, including the fact that their "friends" "Like" the hospital. Remember: Facebook is a social network. People who congregate in Toronto are more likely to say they like - or dislike - the same thing or person, such as the Mayor. There is a tremendous social desirability bias inherent in whom you tell your friends you like - in perpetuity, on the Web.
Social media is a game, not a serious decision tool.
]]>Men Not At Work: The Upside of Unemployed Dadstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30768492013-04-15T00:00:42-04:002013-04-14T23:19:50-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/
"I hear you. My Mom works in government so she can bank her sick days and that helps a bit. But it's been brutal on my Dad when the bank where he worked sacked his whole department. He's been trying to make it work with a new business, but that's kind of a side thing."
"The consumer insights division of my Dad's company got whacked. He's trying really hard and I feel bad for him. We'll be okay, but it's hard."
"My Dad is unemployed and driving my family into the ground."
These conversations are taking place on university campuses across North America, in coffee shops and pretty much anywhere teenagers and young adults hang out.
There's a good case things are getting worse, especially in once vibrant provinces, like Ontario, now a shell of an economy. Ontario's deficit is officially $12-billion and the provincial debt is near $300-billion, more than $22,000 per capita. Ontario's debt-to-GDP ratio will hit 42 per cent in 2015-16; its debt-to-GDP ratio has more than tripled since 1990. Our $48-billion healthcare system is broken. Our insanely expensive higher education system is oblivious to its impending obsolescence.
Despite all the worthwhile attention to the discussion over work-life balance for women led by Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, there's another hidden taboo whose subject used to seldom emerge in public spaces: male unemployment. This is a system shock, particularly on men who often define their self-worth through their employment. The recession has had a devastating effect on these men, causing ricochet effects that include, to name but a few, suicides, stress, angst toward immigrants "stealing jobs," and, on the positive side of the ledger, children with perspective.
The first time I heard a young woman, a 23-year old, talk about her white-shoe law firm Dad-turned struggling solo practitioner was four years ago. The rate of growth in these sorts of conversations has risen sharply. I estimate I've heard the phrase, "My Dad is unemployed" roughly 50 times by people in their 20s and 30s.
I am CEO of a data company, so I am well aware of the limitations of argument by anecdote, but I feel nonetheless that I have stumbled across a predictive indicator: the frequency and breeziness with which young people talk about their unemployed Dads. This is because the extreme taboo of the subject to people over 40 is striking. We remember an era when talking about our Dad's work -- remember that word, "career"? -- was a kind of definitional element of our own being. We were secure in knowing that we were all part of a club where the family unit was safe because Dad kept us safe. Dad was a banker, a stockbroker, or a newspaperman.
No more. It is important for young people, no matter how intelligent or financially secure, to know that work life is not linear, and that one's career will be defined by unpredictability, and by self-taught skill sets that emerge in a turbulent economy. The very awareness of uncertainty -- the ability to converse about this subject openly among peers - -rewards young people with genuine and enduring confidence. Confidence is the DNA of entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic stimulation.
As women "lean in" to the workplace and assert themselves, as they should, men are leaning out. This wreaks uncertainty on the economy to be sure, but there is a star of brilliant light looming over the ocean, visible in the ever-rising storm.
]]>A Casino Will Gamble With Toronto's Most Vulnerable Citizenstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30471162013-04-09T17:08:26-04:002013-04-09T17:17:01-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/
"Pennies don't fall from heaven -- they have to be earned here on earth."
- The Late Margaret Thatcher, former UK Prime Minister
"Every regulation represents a restriction of liberty, every regulation has a cost," said the late U.K. Prime Minister, Lady Margaret Thatcher. May she rest in peace. 'Wicked' policy problems in urban policy, Mrs. Thatcher might say, need to be solved with facts. But gambling is not what the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a U.S. Democrat and sociologist whose courage warmed him to conservatives, would have defined as a wicked problem. That's because "everyone," he said, "is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."
This is at the heart of conservatism, something I learned about in my early journalistic career prior to business and academe, having been on the editorial board of the National Review, dining and conversing on such matters with the late William F. Buckley at his stately Manhattan apartment; serving as a founding member of the National Post; serving our Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, as in-house counsel to the National Citizens' Coalition; and, finally, in homage to Friedrich Hayek and the late Mrs. Thatcher, spending time as a Fellow of the free-market Fraser Institute.
My politics have changed; I am post-partisan now. But I still recall a bit about elemental conservatism. Have no doubt: state-enabled gambling of a casino in the city of Toronto is antithetical to conservatism.
A landmark 1973 article in Policy Sciences, "Dilemmas in a Theory of Planning," by the urban planners Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber drew a distinction between 'tame' and 'wicked' social problems. 'Tame' problems can be redressed by evidence-driven analysis: examples are sanitation, higher agricultural productivity, electrification -- and gambling.
Such issues can be clearly circumscribed, data can be gathered, and the efficacy of policy solutions can be tested. Gambling is a problem of this variety. The essence of conservatism -- of the sort Mr. Ford supposedly espouses -- shows that gambling is a tame problem. The policy solution is to ensure that the state brooks no such policy nonsense.
Exploiting society's most vulnerable citizens, the modus operandi of revenue-generating gambling, is regressive taxation. Imposing it as policy denies evidence of its deleterious effects on families, depression, and on the incidence of what the conservative sociologist, James Q. Wilson, called 'broken windows' crimes, such as vandalism and urban disorder.
Mr. Ford's crusade in support of gambling makes comedic allusion to "10,000 good-paying jobs" and a moral defence suggesting -- without evidence -- that a majority of the people he talks to favour a casino. An appeal to majority -- even if such a fictitious majority existed -- runs counter to conservatism, which requires robust data to support policy action. Further, if Mr. Ford is to rely on 'multiplier-effect economics' -- or government "creating jobs" -- then he knows little about Economics 101, much less conservatism.
In a recent edition of Healthcare Quarterly, a leading health policy journal, Robert I. Simpson, the CEO of the Ontario Problem Gambling Research Centre from its inception in 2000 until 2010, notes that "the singular driving force for expansion [of gambling] is government's quest for non-tax revenue, largely in response to an ideologically based disaffection for tax increases. The trade-off is that, without precedent, government becomes directly involved in providing an activity that knowingly harms the population it is elected to serve." A true conservative, unlike Mr. Ford, will assess the facts soberly.
First, let us review the revenue argument. In a commentary concerning his paper, Mr. Simpson noted that he had calculated the revenues that the proposed mega-casino would extract from the local Toronto economy at $1 billion annually. Applying the 'turn-over rate' currently realized in Ontario, only 35 per cent, he analyzed, will go to government and the remainder, siphoned to operations. That $1 billion will drain away other consumer expenditures, notably spending on entertainment and leisure activities. "An extraction of this magnitude," he writes, "will certainly create substantial job loss and business failure." In other words, gambling is a net-negative revenue generator, creates negative incentives to sustain thriving business, and thereby robs Peter to pay Paul much less.
Second, gambling is highly addictive. According to a 2006 article by Wiebe and colleagues called "Gambling and Problem Gambling in Ontario 2005," there were roughly 330,000 problem gamblers of moderate to high severity. And that was seven years ago.
Hence a large portion of the city Mr. Ford governs already suffers from problem gambling. His jejune pro-gambling agenda will abet their addiction and encourage more addicts and destroy their families. Addictions are twinned with mental health challenges, which, in turn, produce severe negative knock-on effects that deplete scarce health resources and produce harm. Any true conservative, awake to the abundance of data, should admit this.
Third, I do not believe in 'recreational gambling.' Toronto is a great city, and has earned the enduring title, "Toronto the Good," not because it once had as its roots puritan values, but rather because it is still peaceful and devoid of the 'broken windows' problems Professor James Q. Wilson rightly vilified. Gambling is a gateway drug; a city that enables and promotes it violates basic principles of conservatism -- notably, to draw on evidence from other jurisdictions, and to put social problems to heel before they reach metastasis.
]]>Rebecca Marino Did Athletes a Favourtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.27829682013-03-01T10:59:56-05:002013-05-01T05:12:01-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/Our time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.
- Steve Jobs
Rebecca Marino, who reached a summa of 38th in the women's rankings in 2011, announced recently she is quitting the sport because she no longer has the required zeal to succeed at high-octane level tennis.
I am an accidental "tennis Dad" -- I never played the sport much; I trace back my eight-year-old son's obsession and talent with the game to my whooping over Nadal winners whilst watching the US Open on TV. There's also a strange strategy association between tennis obsession and chess obsession -- at least according to my son, an emerging authority on both subjects.
"Rebecca Marino, struggling with depression, walks away from tennis," read a recent CBC headline. Maybe. Young people leave tennis for all sorts of reasons: boredom, an interest in other pursuits; still, we have little to rely on save Ms. Marino's attestation to the media, and, if true, she is this: brave. Congratulations Ms. Marino, and thank you.
Based on my experience as a competitive tennis Dad, soccer Dad, chess Dad -- and someone committed to mental health awareness -- it is not surprising that some individuals who take part in competitive sport are, in general, prone to depression. In competitive sports, there are winners and losers so that there is always an external evaluation of performance. Many of us don't need that. Some kids don't care. There is no right or wrong way to parenting athletes -- although I have witnessed some tennis Dads make the most vicious hockey Dads look timid.
Some athletes have an internal locus of control; they only assess themselves and their worth according to internal standards, whatever they may be. They don't need (or hardly need) validation from outside. They may strive for good grades but don't need them to think well of themselves. They like a "good game of tennis" and like it even better when they win but don't care too much if they don't. I talked to one tennis Dad recently who pointed out the top U-12 boy in the city after I was wowed by the boy's serve. He asked me: "What's different about him than any other kid you see?" Easy. That boy was grinning when he won a point, and when he lost one. That's rare and lovely to see.
Some kids don't crave the challenge of competitive sport; we all challenge ourselves in little ways every day. Some kids like playing basketball or dance just because it's fun.
There are people, however, who, for diverse and complex reasons we will never fully know, need that external validation or else they feel, at times, unworthy. The default position is unworthiness. Their self-esteem may be fragile so they need constant reassurance. During these times they doubt everything -- their capabilities, their attractiveness, their power to elicit the love and admiration from others that they so much crave. Without external validation, they may fall into depression.
This is not a human defect but a biological reality. In many ways, these people are wiser beyond their years, and know that a life of say, tennis, will drown them in tears.
Let me be clear: Only Ms. Marino and her family and close friends know exactly why she abandoned the sport. The specific reasons reported publicly may mutate to align with a popular and fixed media storyline: online bullying is a hot topic, and this may be just one, but not all, of the contributory reasons for why the talented Ms. Marino left tennis.
Understandably, some athletes are exquisitely sensitive to put-downs, dismissive attitudes, and disrespect. As much as they need to win, they need the press to hear about the win and to be fawning and flattering. Criticism, even mild criticism, is hard for them to bear. Even the very successful ones, the stars, remain touchy and vulnerable.
As the Marino story has helped illustrate, the new age of online bullying and organic crowds of anonymous online critics makes life uncomfortable for those who cannot tolerate criticism. Canadians especially like beating up on winners in myriad fields. But, you might say, winners don't need to read the critiques. Why do they bother? Some so crave praise -- as do their parents who have invested in this lifestyle -- that they cannot help themselves.
They must look. They hope for flattery; when they get jeers and insults, they are demolished. When I was in journalism pre-Web, I saw this phenomenon all the time. Some of the most well-known names in Canadian journalism asked me to forward them letters from fans only. I found this weird, but now I understand it.
Team up sports enthusiasts, intense tennis culture and psychopathic denunciators on the Internet -- who spout venom because they can and because they can't easily be traced -- and the combination is explosive and can end badly. In women's tennis, many have succumbed to depression: former Number 1 superstar Jennifer Capriati, former Number 2 player Andrea Jaeger (who later became a nun), even to some degree the all-star and former Number 1 player Monica Seles. On the men's side, the most well known depressive was past French Open winner Yannick Noah, who actually had a full-fledged nervous breakdown. Former Number 1 Jim Courier was said to have mental health challenges and took to reading a book during matches to calm himself down. Read formal World Number 1 Andre Agassi's stellar autobiography Open - an unrecognized tale of his battle with depression throughout his tennis career.
I do not know why Ms. Marino quit tennis. One of my son's tennis coaches told me many players on the international professional circuit were far more promising than him but dropped out for lots of reasons, including depression. Marino's is not a bad news story; it is a good one. People who open up about the realities of depression, and about tennis -- and about all intense sports culture and online bullying, are doing all other athletes and parents a favour for educating us about the realities of life as a competitive athlete.
"I've been suffering depression for close to six years and started realizing it was a problem probably within the last two or three years," Marino told reporters. "I still struggle with my depression but I am doing far better than before. "If I can share my story and change one person's outlook on life, I've reached my goal. Depression is nothing to be ashamed of ... but it is pertinent that you talk to someone about what you are going through."
Saying that takes courage -- and humility. So thank you, Ms. Marino, and congratulations on embarking on the next phase of your life.
]]>Three Predictions About the Internet That (Kind of) Came to Passtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26777352013-02-13T12:16:47-05:002013-04-15T05:12:01-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/famously contested) factoid from a 2010 comment, five exabytes of user-generated information now get created every 10 minutes in 2013. Schmidt may, in fact, be too low by a few exabytes. No matter. In this era of Big Data, three visions of the future of the Internet have crystallized. Depending on which vision emerges as correct will impact knowledge-generation forever.
1. The Zuckerberg Vision
Whatever his alleged missteps as CEO post-IPO -- and I for one count Mr. Zuckerberg as among the greatest entrepreneurs of the last 40 years -- the young man (pre-IPO) had a singular vision of how the Internet would evolve. Specifically, he saw the social Web, and Facebook in particular, as the window to the Web and to all information of relevance to the user. Since the inception of Facebook, other companies, notably Google+ and Twitter, have competed to own the social space -- and one could argue that the entire Web today is social. Most sites that users click on every day have 'share' and 'like' buttons and comment boards. To this extent, Mr. Zuckerberg has so far been wrong about Facebook, or any social pipe, becoming the single portal to all content on the Internet, but he has been right that there would be multiple social sandboxes, such as Twitter, from which Big Data companies would try to extract information of relevance.
Meanwhile, the need for new monetization strategies and post-IPO revenue have polluted the Zuckerberg vision; specifically, cookie-based, targeted ads (based on what you have 'shared' or 'liked') clutter the content of the social experience, at least for some users bothered by this. Data extraction from these sandboxes is also seriously threatened by emerging privacy legislation that should raise a huge red flag with Big Data extraction and analytics companies everywhere.
2. The Tim Berners-Lee Vision
Given that he invented the World Wide Web, observers often anoint Sir Berners-Lee with hagiographic status, but his vision was just that, and it has been wrong -- so far. Specifically, he felt that the next era of the Web (i.e. today) would see a beautiful semantic Web emerge supreme, such that all of us would enjoy the elegant and scientific organization of knowledge most relevant to us. So, for example, when I Google my lawyer, his slosh-fest at his fraternity keg bash in 1996 doesn't land on the top page of Google results. Instead, Berners-Lee forecasts, search would become an increasingly intelligent statistical Bayesian agent, always somehow knowing what really matters to me (i.e., that my lawyer has certain experience in a rarefied area of the law that matters to me right now).
This is difficult in the context of two factors at play today: first, companies are increasingly sophisticated at Googlewashing, or gaming search results; second, the need, as with Facebook, for search companies to move away from data purity and artificial intelligence and toward targeted ads based on user relevancy. In the world of search, Big Data companies can thereby extract information based on search relevancy and intensity (e.g., the frequency and intensity with which a URL gets shared).
3. The Jimmy Wales Vision
Bless Jimmy Donal Wales, for he co-founded one of the most important information tools in history, Wikipedia. His vision of the future of the Internet was almost right. Specifically, he imagined, based on crowdsourcing goodwill and collective intelligence, that Wikipedia could create a kind of mini-semantic web -- the accurate, elegant organization of knowledge, over time -- as a sandbox within the World Wide Web itself, but he under-estimated the decline of 'Wikipedians' committed to the cause. The very success of Wikipedia hyped the value of the wiki as an open organizational knowledge tool for others to emulate, and then sucked away legions from the Wikipedian army of collaborative editors, especially as contribution guidelines became stricter.
What's emerging now is more like a Big Data swamp
At present, the Web is and will likely continue to be a vast, deep swamp of information, bigger and bigger, dirtier and dirtier, with everyone fishing for gems of insight with different fishing rods to extract information of value. Our company uses a suite of fishing rods; we, and our clients, value the nature of the global data we extract. How others extract the right information of relevance will depend on which vision of the Internet wins out. And have no doubt; there will be only one winner.
]]>Why the Older You Are, the Happier You Gettag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.25219392013-01-23T08:47:33-05:002013-03-25T05:12:01-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/
In a brilliant study published in 2010 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Arthur Stone and colleagues interviewed over 340,000 people in the United States by telephone to ask about how happy they were. The survey asked each person to rank overall life satisfaction on a 10-point scale and to answer six yes-or-no questions about enjoyment, happiness, stress, worry, anger, and sadness.
What the researchers found surprised them. Levels of stress and anger decline progressively and significantly after people pass through their early 20s. This is not a story about the feeling of emancipation that comes with graduating from college or paying for your own cellphone plan. We humans shed stress and anger bit by bit as we age.
Over 50 and Smiling?
When it comes to the feeling of worry, it follows a slightly different trajectory. Worry rises after age 18, but then falls again after 50. Perhaps by that time all your anxious worries have already materialized -- the career that never reached the heights you once imagined; the marriage that fizzled; the house that foreclosed; the friends who betrayed you; the children who turned out less than perfect. After age 50, there is nothing further to worry about and so one becomes increasingly happy. Or at least that's one explanation.
If true, this is of great significance for managers in recessionary times. Many over 50 have been thrust into long-term unemployment. Yet thanks to this new study, we now have powerful data to fight age discrimination in the workplace. Older workers are happy workers, and happy workers are more sensitive to client needs. Leaders, take note.
The study followed a careful methodology. All the various feelings were measured using tools called "Hedonic WB" and "Global WB." WB stands for well-being. This reflects one's own subjective view of the experience of well-being. External realities don't matter. You could be living in squalor (as long as you have a phone and can be reached in order to be surveyed) and you still apparently feel more and more content as you age. Amazing when you consider that by age 85 (the happiness apex apparently) one's physical health is generally not top notch.
Why would people be happier when they get older? Is it because they have accumulated material goods over their life span? Do riches make people happier? Apparently not. Being a man or a woman didn't make a difference, being single or partnered didn't make a difference, being employed or not didn't matter and neither did having children at home. In other words, outside circumstances didn't affect the outcome as far as the researchers could tell. Contentment is a state of mind.
Maybe world views change with maturity. You get wise and realize, by the time you reach your 80s, that possessions and earthly glory don't count. It's the emotional-spiritual dimension that really matters.
But there may be another explanation still. Perhaps the progressive elimination of crucial nerve cells in the brain have obliterated bad memories so there's nothing remembered worth worrying about? Nerve cells die at random, I was taught. But maybe that's not true. Maybe the nerve networks that record good times stay intact longer than those others that hold awkward, humiliating, depressing moments that you have ruminated over so often that the circuits are worn from overuse, burnt out, and the bad memories have melted away forever.
Whatever the reason behind the study's results, the news is good for older people (and something to look forward to even if you're young). By the time you hit 85, you'll be more satisfied with yourself than you ever were. Bob Dylan was right. You'll be so much younger then, you're older than that now.
This essay is adapted and updated from the author's 2010 blog at Longwoods.com
]]>Per un confronto globale sul cibo nelle scuoletag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23144392012-12-17T09:30:00-05:002013-02-16T05:12:01-05:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/Turkey Tetrazzini', tacchino alla Tetrazzini, immerso in un intingolo brunastro. Come si può dimenticare il pranzo alle scuole superiori? Le cose saranno migliorate negli ultimi ventiquattro anni, da quando ho preso il diploma? E considerando tutti i dibattiti che ora infervorano gli Stati Uniti - e addirittura il Congresso - sul cibo che i nostri figli mangiano a scuola, le cose vanno meglio per gli studenti delle altre democrazie occidentali?
Dunque, in uno studio condotto per l'Huffington Post, la mia società di ricerca dati, la Riwi Corporation, ha cercato di scoprire esattamente come sono i pasti scolastici delle superiori svolgendo un'indagine comparata nei sei paesi in cui l'HuffPost ha dei siti: Stati Uniti, Regno Unito, Canada, Francia, Spagna e Italia. Soprattutto, volevamo scoprire cosa pensano gli studenti dei loro pasti: per quanto riguarda il gusto e per quanto riguarda la salubrità.
La nostra ricerca ha esaminato 9.532 studenti con vivi ricordi dei loro pranzi scolastici alle superiori (con una sproporzionata concentrazione sui ragazzi attualmente iscritti e su quelli appena diplomati), divisi equamente tra maschi e femmine. Il "Rapporto sul pranzo alle scuole superiori" che ne è derivato è la prima indagine globale su questo argomento.
La cosa che mi pare più interessante, tra quelle che abbiamo scoperto, è la mancanza di una correlazione statistica tra quanto i nostri interpellati considerano orribili i loro pasti scolastici e quanto gli stessi interpellati considerano gustosi quegli stessi pasti. Una conclusione possibile, in base a questi dati, è che il pranzo alle scuole superiori non è un argomento su cui gli studenti attualmente iscritti, o i neodiplomati o gli adulti riflettono con trasporto, e questa realtà di fatto varia pochissimo da paese a paese. Qui sotto sono riportati alcuni risultati importanti di carattere generale e alcune questioni metodologiche, ma prima soffermiamoci sulla domanda: Perché, quando confrontiamo i risultati dei singoli interpellati - come è opportuno fare in molte indagini statistiche - non c'è correlazione tra la percezione della salubrità di un pasto scolastico e la percezione del suo gusto?
Per aiutarmi a trovare una risposta, mi sono rivolto a una delle massime autorità mondiali sull'obesità Dr. Arya Sharma, Professor of Medicine and Chair in Obesity Research and Management at the University of Alberta. Non era affatto sorpreso da questi risultati. La sua risposta è stata la seguente:
" "Se solo potessimo fare in modo che il cibo salutare diventi più gustoso, più economico e più pratico, sarebbe quello il cibo che tutti mangerebbero. La gente decide cosa mangiare in base al gusto, al costo e alla praticità. Per rendere gustoso il cibo salutare bisogna saper cucinare. E' difficile battere il gusto dei grassi, dello zucchero e del sale (e quella scricchiolante croccantezza dei cibi fritti). Gli ingredienti freschi e salutari sono costosi. Nulla è più pratico di un panino o di un hamburger preso al volo quando si è di corsa. Mangiare sano richiede più tempo (fare la spesa, mondare gli ingredienti, cucinarli, masticarli) e più denaro (denaro che abbiamo, ma che non spendiamo in cibo). [Questo] dipende dalla cultura e dai valori: aggiungici un po' di biologia evolutiva e voilà, avrai esattamente la situazione attuale. "
Allora: questa generazione di liceali è una causa persa per quanto riguarda l'emergenza obesità? Il solo fatto di avviare un dibattito globale ci aiuterà a iniziare a trovare delle soluzioni globali per uno dei maggiori problemi di salute che il pianeta si trova ad affrontare. I politici e i dietisti scolastici degli Stati Uniti possono imparare molto dalle misure che i loro colleghi di altri paesi democratici stanno adottando per combattere l'alimentazione scorretta tra i ragazzi, e viceversa.
Ecco i principali esiti del Rapporto sul pranzo alle scuole superiori":
● Negli Stati Uniti, sia per il gusto, sia per la salubrità, gli interpellati hanno detto che i pasti alle scuole superiori erano terribili (per quanto riguarda la salubrità, il 25 percento ha detto che i pasti erano "terribili"; per quanto riguarda il gusto, il 27% ha detto che i pasti erano "terribili"). Accidenti!
● In Canada, sia per il gusto, sia per la salubrità, la situazione sembra un po' più rosea. Solo il 17% ha detto che i pranzi alle scuole superiori erano terribili in termini di salubrità; il 16% li ha definiti terribili in termini di gusto. Tuttavia, mettendo questo dato in prospettiva, non sono sicuro di come potrei considerare la mia classe, dove il 16-17% degli studenti ha ricevuto il minimo dei voti.
● L'Italia, sia per il gusto, sia per la salubrità, appare molto simile al Canada: il 19% ha detto che i pranzi alle scuole superiori erano terribili in termini di salubrità; il 17% li ha definiti terribili in termini di gusto.
● La Francia, sia per il gusto, sia per la salubrità, sembra attestarsi in questo stesso gruppo: il 16% considera terribili i pasti in termini di salubrità. La stessa percentuale di interpellati (16%) li considera terribili in termini di gusto.
● La Spagna, sia per il gusto, sia per la salubrità, dà risultati simili: il 16% trova il cibo terribile in termini di salubrità; il 15% (la percentuale più bassa!) lo definisce terribile in termini di gusto.
● La Gran Bretagna, nonostante il suo famoso chef e celebrità mediatica (hello Jamie Oliver!) abbia rivolto la sua attenzione a migliorare la salubrità dei pranzi scolastici delle superiori, è molto più vicina agli Stati Uniti che non al Canada e agli altri paesi presi in esame: il 21% trova i pasti alle scuole superiori terribili in termini di salubrità; il 24% li definisce terribili in termini di gusto.
Negli Stati Uniti, ovviamente, i dati variano da regione a regione:
● Stati centro-occidentali: il punteggio medio per la salubrità dei pasti scolastici è di -0.61 e il punteggio medio del gusto è di -0.66. Un totale di 2 è il massimo punteggio possibile (vedi il processo di valutazione qui sotto).
● Stati nord-orientali: il punteggio medio per la salubrità dei pasti scolastici è di -0.39 e il punteggio medio del gusto è di -0.43.
● Stati meridionali: il punteggio medio per la salubrità dei pasti scolastici è di -0.51 e il punteggio medio del gusto è di -0.59.
● Stati occidentali: il punteggio medio per la salubrità dei pasti scolastici è di -0.38 e il punteggio medio del gusto è di -0.37.
Per ogni area degli Stati Uniti, secondo la suddivisione del Census Bureau, i punteggi sono stati calcolati sulla base dei punteggi medi forniti dagli interpellati in ciascuno stato incluso in ogni area. I punteggi degli interpellati sono i seguenti: terribile = -2; cattivo = -1; passabile = 0; buono = 1; ottimo = 2.
Perciò, in sintesi, sembra che nessuno di questi paesi fornisca pasti che piacciano e che siano salutari, almeno dal punto di vista degli studenti.
In tutti e sei i paesi, tutti i risultati riflettono le posizioni della popolazione di internet di ciascun paese, con un margine di +/- 2.5% 19 volte su 20. Questi dati - quasi 10.000 interpellati in un totale di sei paesi - sono stati forniti dalla Riwi Corporation, una società privata che si basa su miei brevetti originali e sul mio lavoro accademico, commissionato dal governo, per la vigilanza sulle pandemie e sulla sicurezza dei vaccini in tutto il mondo. La Riwi (Real-Time-Interactive-Worldwide-Intelligence) è ormai riconosciuta come società di punta in via d'affermazione nel campo degli "smart data": è un approccio unico, brevettato e sottoposto a valutazioni di settore che raccoglie le opinioni degli utenti in ogni area del mondo, ventiquattrore al giorno, sette giorni alla settimana. Nell'ultima pubblicazione della Riwi, "Smarter Data: Eliciting Insights from the Cloud", in collaborazione con il gigante finanziario Clsa, Ed McGuire, esperto di tecnologia Clsa e analista di software, rileva nell'introduzione che "l'approccio unico ed esclusivo della Riwi spiana la via per un'analisi finora impensabile delle preferenze e dei comportamenti degli utenti."
I tassi di risposta sono calcolati in base alla percentuale di interpellati in internet che, pubblicamente e senza incentivi, hanno risposto alla serie di domande che chiedevano dati rilevanti (ad esempio l'età) e hanno poi risposto a tutte le domande.
I link ai dati globali della Riwi Corporation esprimono la nostra metodologia, che non si avvale di "gruppi" prereclutati e incentivati; non ricava le "opinioni" setacciando ciò che scrive la gente in internet; e non raccoglie i cosiddetti "grossi dati"; si trovano qui e qui. In poche parole, la metodologia della Riwi, brevettata e sottoposta a valutazioni di settore, permette alla Riwi di individuare, nel rispetto della privacy, un gruppo rappresentativo di utenti della rete non incentivati in 193 paesi, relativo alla frequenza dell'uso di internet in ogni data popolazione. Inoltre, grazie ai suoi brevetti e software, la Riwi Corporation è in grado di localizzare le proprie ricerche anche all'interno di una stessa città.
]]>Starting a Global Conversation About School Lunchtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22849992012-12-17T09:27:16-05:002013-02-16T05:12:01-05:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/Turkey Tettrazzini soaked in brownish gunk. How can anyone forget high-school lunch? Have things changed for the better over the 24 years since I graduated high-school? And given all the fights currently going on in the United States over what our kids eat at school -- in Congress no less -- is it any better for students in other Western democracies?
So, in a study exclusively for the Huffington Post, my data research firm, The RIWI Corporation, set out to find out exactly how public high school lunches compared in six countries where HuffPost has sites: U.S., UK, Canada, France, Spain, and Italy. More important, we wanted to find out what the students thought of their food: taste-wise and health-wise.
Our research surveyed 9,532 students with close memories of high school lunch (with a disproportionate focus on high school kids and recent high school grads), equally divided between male and female. The resulting HuffPost High School Lunch Index is the first global survey of its kind on this topic.
Most interesting to me in our findings is the lack of any statistical correlation between how horrible our respondents consider high school lunches and how tasty these same respondents feel those lunches to be. One conclusion from these data is that high-school lunch is not something current students or recent students or adults reflect on fondly, and this fact varies only slightly among countries. Below are some important high-level findings and methodological issues, but, first, let's explore the question: Why, when you match individual respondent results -- as one needs to do in many statistical tests -- is there no correlation between perceptions of healthfulness of a high-school lunch and perceptions of tastiness?
To help me figure this out, I asked one of the leading global authorities on obesity, Dr. Arya Sharma, Professor of Medicine and Chair in Obesity Research and Management at the University of Alberta. He was not surprised at all by the findings. His response is as follows:
"If you could just make healthy food taste better, cost less and be more convenient, that's what everyone would be eating. People decide what to eat based on taste cost and convenience. Making healthy food taste good takes cooking skills -- it is simply hard to trump the taste of fat, sugar, and salt (and the crispy crunchiness of anything deep fried). Healthy fresh ingredients are expensive. Nothing is more convenient than grabbing a sandwich or hamburger on the run. Healthy eating requires more time (shopping, cleaning, cooking, chewing) and more money (which we have but don't want to spend on food). [This] comes down to culture and values -- sprinkle in some evolutionary biology and bingo -- you get exactly what we have now."
So: Is the generation of high-schoolers a lost cause when it comes to the obesity crisis? Just starting a global conversation will help us start finding global solutions to what is one of the greatest health issues facing the planet. U.S. politicians and school dietitians can learn a lot from what their counterparts in other democracies are doing to combat unhealthy eating amongst kids -- and vice versa.
Here are the key findings from the High School Lunch Index:
● In the United States, on both tastiness and healthfulness, respondents said high-school lunches were terrible (25%, in terms of healthfulness, said the lunches were 'terrible'; 27%, in terms of tastiness, said the lunches were 'terrible'). Yikes!
● In Canada, on both tastiness and healthfulness, things look somewhat sunnier. Only 17% said high-school lunches were terrible in terms of health; 16% said they tasted terrible. Putting this in perspective, however, I'm not sure how well I'd consider my class where 16-17% received an F grade.
● Italy, on both tastiness and healthfulness, appears very similar to Canada: 19% said high-school lunches were terrible in terms of health; 17% said they tasted terrible.
● France, on both tastiness and healthfulness, appears stuck around this same plateau; 16% consider the food terrible on health. The same proportion of respondents (16%), consider the taste to be terrible.
● Spain, on both tastiness and healthfulness, is similar: 16% see the food as terrible in health; 15% (the lowest!) rank the lunches as terrible on taste.
● Great Britain, despite the huge media and celebrity-chef (hello Jamie Oliver!) attention paid to improving the healthfulness high school lunches, is far closer to the United States than to Canada and to our other countries surveyed: 21% see UK high school lunch fare as terrible in healthfulness; 24% rank the lunches terrible on taste.
In the United States, there are of course some variations by region:
● Midwest: The average healthfulness score is -0.61 and tastiness score of high school lunches is -0.66. A total of 2 is the highest possible score (see scoring process below).
● Northeast: The average healthfulness score is -0.39 and tastiness score of high school lunches is -0.43.
● South: The average healthfulness score is -0.51 and tastiness score of high school lunches is -0.59.
● West: The average healthfulness score is -0.38 and tastiness score of high school lunches is -0.37.
Scores for each of the above U.S. Census areas were calculated based on the average scores of respondents in the states included in each area. A respondent's score of terrible = -2; bad = -1; ok = 0; good = 1; excellent = 2.
So in short, it looks like none of these countries are providing popular, healthy lunches -- at least from a students' viewpoint.
In all six countries, all findings are reflective of the Internet population in each country +/- 2.5%, 19 times out of 20. These data - almost 10,000 respondents from a total of six countries (United States, Canada, the UK, Spain, Italy and France) -- were powered by the RIWI Corporation, a private company based on my original patents and academic work in government-commissioned pandemic surveillance and vaccine safety surveillance work around the world. RIWI [=Real-Time-Interactive-Worldwide-Intelligence] is being recognized as an evolving leader in 'smart data': a unique, peer-reviewed and patented approach to gathering customer insights in every region of the world 24/7. In RIWI's latest publication, "Smarter Data: Eliciting Insights from the Cloud", in conjunction with Asia's finance giant, CLSA, expert CLSA technology and software analyst Ed McGuire points out in the forward that "RIWI's unique and proprietary approach paves the way for heretofore unattainable insights into customer preferences and behaviour."
*Response rates are calculated based on the percentage of exposed, un-incented Internet respondents to the series of questions who answered any question of value (e.g. age), and also answered all questions.
Links to the RIWI Corporation's global data capture methodology -- which does not use pre-recruited, incented 'panellists'; does not sift 'insights' from what people write on the Internet; and which does not capture so-called "Big Data"; are here and here. In a nutshell, RIWI's patented, peer-reviewed methodology enables RIWI, in a privacy-compliant manner, to capture a non-incented representative group of Internet users in 193 countries, relative to the frequency of Internet usage in any given population. The RIWI Corporation's patent claims and software also give RIWI the capacity to geo-locate down to a sub-city level.]]>Una conversación global sobre los menús escolarestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23141062012-12-17T04:54:22-05:002013-02-15T05:12:01-05:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/Tettrazzini de pavo (un guiso de carne, setas, verduras y nata), bañados en un mejunje de color marrón. ¿Cómo puede nadie olvidar la comida del instituto? ¿Han mejorado las cosas desde que terminé el bachillerato, hace 24 años? Y, en estos momentos en los que en Estados Unidos se está debatiendo -nada menos que en el Congreso- sobre lo que comen nuestros hijos en el colegio, ¿comen mejor los estudiantes en otras democracias occidentales?
En un estudio para The Huffington Post, mi empresa de investigación de datos, The RIWI Corporation, se propuso averiguar exactamente cómo podían compararse las comidas de los colegios públicos en seis países en los que HuffPost tiene ediciones: Estados Unidos, Reino Unido, Canadá, Francia, España e Italia. Sobre todo, queríamos descubrir qué piensan los alumnos de su comida, desde el punto de vista del sabor y desde el punto de vista de la salud.
Nuestro estudio entrevistó a 9.532 estudiantes con recuerdos cercanos de la comida del instituto (con un peso desproporcionado de los alumnos de instituto y jóvenes que hubieran terminado el bachillerato hace poco), repartidos por igual entre hombres y mujeres. El resultado, el Índice de Comidas de Instituto de HuffPost, es el primer sondeo mundial de este tipo sobre el tema.
Lo que más me ha interesado de nuestros hallazgos es la falta de toda correlación estadística entre lo horribles que nuestros encuestados consideran las comidas del instituto y lo sabrosas que esos mismos encuestados consideran esas mismas comidas. Un descubrimiento es que la comida de instituto no es algo de lo que los estudiantes, actuales o recientes, tengan buena opinión, y las diferencias entre unos países y otros son mínimas a este respecto. A continuación hay varias conclusiones generales y algunos aspectos metodológicos, pero antes examinemos la cuestión: ¿por qué, al comparar resultados individuales de los entrevistados -como se necesita hacer en muchas pruebas estadísticas-, no existe ninguna correlación entre la percepción de que una comida de instituto es saludable y la percepción de que está rica?
Para ayudarme a entenderlo, pregunté a una de las principales autoridades mundiales en obesidad, el doctor Arya Sharma, catedrático de medicina y director de la cátedra de Investigaciones y Gestión de la Obesidad en la Universidad de Alberta (Canadá). Nuestros hallazgos no le sorprendieron en absoluto. Su respuesta fue la siguiente:
"Si consiguiéramos hacer que la comida sana supiera mejor, costara menos y fuera más cómoda de consumir, eso es lo que comería todo el mundo. La gente decide qué comer basándose en el sabor, el coste y la comodidad. Para hacer que la comida sana esté rica hace falta saber cocinar; es difícil superar el sabor de las grasas, el azúcar y la sal (y la textura crujiente de algo rebozado y frito). Los ingredientes frescos y saludables son caros. No hay nada más cómodo que comer un sándwich o una hamburguesa a toda prisa. Comer sano exige más tiempo (hacer la compra, limpiar, cocinar, masticar) y más dinero (que tenemos pero no queremos gastar en comida). Es cuestión de cultura y valores, y si se añade una dosis de biología evolutiva, ya está: se obtiene exactamente lo que tenemos ahora".
En definitiva: ¿Es la generación de los adolescentes una causa perdida en la lucha contra la obesidad? El mero hecho de iniciar una conversación de alcance mundial nos ayudará a empezar a encontrar soluciones mundiales a una de las crisis sanitarias más graves que afronta el planeta. Los políticos y los nutricionistas escolares de Estados Unidos pueden aprender mucho de lo que están haciendo sus homólogos de otras democracias para combatir los hábitos alimentarios poco saludables de nuestros hijos, y viceversa.
He aquí las principales conclusiones del Índice de Comidas de Instituto:
En Estados Unidos los entrevistados dijeron que las comidas de instituto eran horribles tanto en sabor como desde el punto de vista de la salud (en cuanto a la salud, el 25% dijo que las comidas eran "horribles"; en sabor, dijo que eran "horribles" el 27%) ¡Puaj!
En Canadá, tanto desde el punto de vista del sabor como desde el punto de vista de la salud, las cosas parecen algo más positivas. Solo el 17% dijo que las comidas de instituto eran horribles para la salud; el 16% dijo que tenían un sabor terrible. Ahora, para poner esto en perspectiva, no sé cómo de buena calificaría mi clase, en la que un 16-17% recibió un suspenso.
Italia parece muy similar a Canadá en sabor y en salud: el 19% dijo que las comidas de instituto eran horribles para la salud, y el 17% dijo que eran terribles en sabor.
Francia parece estar más o menos en estos niveles, tanto en sabor como en salud; el 16% considera la comida horrible para la salud, y la misma proporción (16%9 considera horrible el sabor.
España es similar en sabor y en salud: el 16% cree que la comida es horrible para la salud, y el 15% (¡la cifra más baja!) que las comidas tienen un gusto horrible.
Gran Bretaña, pese a la anorme atención que prestan los medios de comunicación y los cocineros famosos (como Jamie Oliver) a la necesidad de que las comidas de los institutos sean más sanas, está mucho más cerca de Estados Unidos que de Canadá y los demás países investigados: el 21% cree que las comidas de instituto en el Reino Unido son terribles para la salud, y el 24% dice que tienen un sabor horrible.
En Estados Unidos, como es natural, hay ciertas variaciones según la región:
Medio oeste: la puntuación media de las comidas de instituto desde el punto de vista de la salud es de -0,61, y desde el punto de vista del sabor, de -0,66. La máxima puntuación posible es 2 (ver el proceso de puntuación más abajo).
Nordeste: La puntuación media en salud es -0,39 y en sabor es -0,43.
Sur: La puntuación media de las comidas de instituto en salud es -0,51 y en sabor es -0,59.
Oeste: La puntuación media en salud es -0,38 y en sabor es -0,37.
Las puntuaciones para cada una de las áreas mencionadas de Estados Unidos se calcularon basadas en las puntuaciones medias dadas por los entrevistados en los estados incluidas en cada zona. Una respuesta de horrible = -2, malo = -1, OK = 0, bueno = 1, excelente = 2.
En resumen, da la impresión de que ninguno de estos países ofrece comidas sanas y que gusten, al menos desde el punto de vista del alumno.
Vamos a hablar de ello.
Notas sobre la Metodología de Captura de Datos de RIWI Corporation:
En los seis países, todas las conclusiones reflejan la población internauta en cada país más menos 2,5%, 19 de cada 20 veces. Estos datos -respondieron casi 10.000 estudiantes de un total de seis países (Estados Unidos, Canadá, Reino Unido, España, Italia y Francia)- los estudió RIWI Corporation, una empresa privada basada en mis patentes originales y mi labor académica en vigilancia de pandemias y supervición de seguridad de las vacunas en todo el mundo por encargo del Gobierno. RIWI [=Real-Time-Interactive-Worldwide-Intelligence] está adquiriendo prestigio como una de las principales empresas en el campo de los "datos inteligentes", un enfoque único, evaluado por profesionales y patentado de la recogida de percepciones de los consumidores en todas las regiones del mundo las 24 horas del día. En la última publicación de RIWI, Smarter Data: Eliciting Insights from the Cloud (Datos más inteligentes: extraer conclusiones de la nube), en colaboración con el gigante financiero asiático CLSA, el experto analista informático y de tecnología de CLSA Ed McGuire señala en el prefacio que "el peculiar y exclusivo enfoque de RIWI abre la puerta a poder descubrir unos conocimientos hasta ahora inaccesibles sobre las preferencias y el comportamiento de los consumidores".
Porcentajes de respuesta por países*
Estados Unidos: 80,8% [53% mujeres; 47% hombres]
España: 59,4% [41% mujeres; 59% hombres]
Italia: 58,4% [39% mujeres; 61% hombres]
Francia: 70,5% [44% mujeres; 56% hombres]
Reino Unido: 75,7% [48% mujeres; 52% hombres]
Canadá: 72.3% [48% mujeres; 52% hombres]
*Los porcentajes de respuesta se calculan basándose en el porcentaje de entrevistados con internet y no incentivados que respondieron a cualquier pregunta de valor (por ejemplo, la edad) y respondieron a todas las preguntas.
Los enlaces a la metodología de captura de datos mundiales de RIWI Corporation -que no utiliza "panelistas" seleccionados e incentivados, no entresaca "conclusiones" de lo que la gente escribe en internet y no captura los llamados grandes datos, están aquí y aquí. En resumen, la metodología patentada y evaluada de RIWI permite, sin dañar la privacidad, capturar las respuestas de un grupo representativo de usuarios de internet no incentivados en 193 países, en función de la frecuencia de uso de internet en cuaquier población concreta. Las reivindicaciones de la patente y el software de RIWI Corporation dan asimismo a RIWI la capacidad de geolocalizar hasta un nivel inferior a la ciudad.]]>Quand les élèves jugent leurs cantinestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.23136652012-12-17T02:31:39-05:002013-02-15T05:12:01-05:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/dinde Tettrazzini trempée dans une infâme mixture marron. Comment oublier les déjeûners servis à la cantine du lycée? Les choses ont-elles progressées au cours des 24 dernières années depuis l'obtention de mon diplôme de lycéen? Au regard de tous les échanges houleux qui ont lieu actuellement aux Etats-Unis (au Congrès de surcroît) concernant ce que mangent nos enfants, les étudiants des autres démocraties occidentales sont-ils mieux lotis?
Eh bien, dans une étude exclusivement réalisée pour le Huffington Post, ma société de sondages et d'études statistiques, RIWI Corporation, s'est interessée à comparer la qualité des déjeûners servis à la cantine des lycées publics dans six pays où le Huffington Post a des sites: Aux USA, au Royaume-Uni, au Canada, en France, en Espagne et en Italie. Plus important encore, nous voulions savoir ce que les lycéens pensaient de leurs repas: en terme de goût et d'équilibre alimentaire.
Pour notre sondage, 9532 élèves ayant un souvenir proche de leurs repas de cantine ont été interrogés (avec une attention disproportionnée accordée aux lycéens et aux anciens lycéens récemment diplômés), avec un partage égal entre hommes et femmes. Les index tirés de l'enquête pour le Huffington Post concernant les déjeûners de cantine des lycées sont les premiers du genre sur ce sujet particulier.
Le plus intéressant pour moi dans nos résultats, c'est l'absence de corrélation entre la qualité des repas de cantines des lycées, jugée horrible et le goût des repas que ces mêmes sondés disent apprécier. Une conclusion tirée de ces données est que les repas de la cantine ne sont pas un sujet que les étudiants actuels et récents aiment particulièrement évoquer et ce chiffre varie légèrement de pays en pays.
Voyez ci-dessous les résultats très importants et les méthodologies employées, mais d'abord explorons la question de savoir pourquoi lorsque l'on compare les réponses individuelles des sondés, il n'y a pas de correlation entre la perception d'un repas de cantine équilibré et la perception du bon goût des repas?
Pour m'aider à l'expliquer, j'ai posé la question à l'une des autorités mondiale sur l'obésité, Dr. Arya Sharma. Professeur de médecine, et président de l'Institut de Recherche sur l'Obésité. Sa réponse est la suivante: " Si seulement on pouvait rendre la nourriture saine plus délicieuse moins chère et plus accessible, tout le monde en mangerait. Les gens décident de ce qu'ils mangent en fonction du goût, du prix et de l'accès. Rendre la nourriture saine délicieuse demande des talents de cuisiniers (Il est simplement difficle de battre le goût du gras, du sucre et du sel et le croustillant de toute chose frite.) Les ingrédients sains et frais sont chers. Rien n'est plus pratique que d'attrapper un sandwich quand on est pressés. Manger équilibré requiert plus de temps (à acheter, à nettoyer, à preparer et à mâcher) et plus d'argent que l'on a mais que l'on ne veut pas dépenser pour de la nourriture. On en revient à la question de culture et de valeur, saupoudrez-y l'évolution biologique et bingo! Vous obtenez exactement la situation actuelle.
Alors, la génération de lycéens est-elle une cause perdue quand il s'agit de la crise d'obésité? Commencer un débat mondial nous aidera à commencer à trouver des solutions mondiales à un des plus gros problèmes de santé auquel la planète fait face. Les politiciens américains et diéteticiens des écoles pourraient apprendre de ce que font leurs homologues dans d'autres démocraties pour combattre les mauvaises habitudes alimentaires chez les jeunes et vice-versa.
Voici les résultats-clés provenant de l'index des repas des cantines au Lycée.
Aux Etats-Unis, concernant le goût et l'équilibre alimentaire, les sondés disent que les repas de cantines servis par les Lycées étaient déplorables. (25%, disent qu'en terme d'équilibre alimentaire, les repas sont déplorables; 27% disent des repas qu'ils étaient déplorables en terme de gôut). Beurk!
Au Canada, concernant le goût et l'équilibre alimentaire, les choses paraissent plus ensoleillées. Seul 17% disent des repas des cantines au lycée qu'ils étaient déplorables en terme d'équilibre alimentaire; 16% disent que le goût était déplorable. Mis en perspective, je ne suis pas sûr du jugement s'il était porté par ma classe sachant que 16-17% d'eux ont reçu un F.
En Italie, concernant à la fois le goût et l'équilibre alimentaire, résultats similaires au Canada; 19% disent des repas de la cantine au lycée qu'ils étaient déplorables; 17% disent que le goût était déplorable.
En France, concernant à la fois le goût et l'équilibre alimentaire, on semble se retrouver autour du meme plateau; 16% considèrent que l'alimentation n'est pas équilibrée. Une proportion égale de sondés (16%), considère que le goût était déplorable.
En Espagne, concernant à la fois le goût et l'équilibre alimentaire, résultat similaire. 16% voient les repas comme non-équilibrés; 15% (le taux le plus bas!) classe les repas de la cantine du lycée comme n'ayant pas de goût.
En Grande-Bretagne, en dépit de l'énorme attention médiatique et des chefs de cuisine célèbres ("bien le bonjour Jamie Oliver!"), l'attention accordée à l'amélioration de l'alimentation équilibrée dans les lycées est de loin plus proche de celle des Etats-Unis que du Canada et des autres pays sondés: 21% voient les repas de cantine des lycées au Royaume-Uni comme étant déplorables en terme d'équilibre alimentaire, 24% les classe comme ayant un goût déplorable.
Aux Etats-Unis, bien entendu, il y a des variations par régions:
Dans le Midwest: le score pour l'équilibre alimentaire des repas de la cantine au lycée est de -0,61 et pour le goût, -0, 66. Un total allant jusqu'a 2 points est le score le plus élevé (voir ci-dessous le procédé du calcul.)
Dans le Nord-Est: La moyenne accordée à l'équilibre alimentaire est de -0,39 et le score du goût des repas de la cantine au lycée est de -0,43
Dans le Sud: La moyenne accordée à l'équilibre alimentaire est de -0,51 et le score du goût des repas de la cantine au lycée est de -0,59.
Dans l'Ouest: La moyenne accordée à l'équilibre alimentaire est de -0,38 et le score du goût des repas de la cantine au lycée est de -0,37.
Les chiffres pour chacune des zones du recensement américain ont été calculés en prenant la moyenne des scores des sondés. Une note pour un repas déplorable = -2; mauvais = -1; passable = 0; bon = 1; excellent = 2.
En résumé, il semble qu'aucun de ces pays ne propose de repas populaires et équilibrés, du moins pour ce qui est du point de vue des élèves.
Parlons-en.
Notes concernant la méthodologie de recherche et la collecte d'informations de RIWI Corporation:
Dans les six pays, tous les résultats reflètent la population Internet de chaque pays +/- 2,5%, 19 fois sur 20. Ces données provenant de près de 10.000 sondés de six pays (Etats-Unis, Canada, R-U, Espagne, Italie et France) sont générés par RIWI Corporation (Real Time Interactive Worldwide Intelligence--Renseignements Internationaux Interactifs en Temps Réel), une société privée reconnue comme leader dans les "smart data" et ce, basé sur mon brevetage original et le travail académique pour le gouvernement dans le cadre de l'étroite surveillance des pandémies et du travail de surveillance pour la sécurité des vaccins de par le monde; une approche à la collecte d'information et d'opinions de clients vivant dans toutes les régions du monde 24h/24 7j/7, revue par ses pairs et brevetée. Dans sa dernière édition, en conjonction avec le géant asiatique de la finance CLSA, Ed McGuire, expert en technologie et analyste de logiciels de CLSA, attire l'attention sur le fait que "le propriétariat et l'approche unique de RIWI ouvre la voie à un système jusque là inatteignable, de collecte de données et d'opinions sur les préferences et comportements des clients."
Les taux de réponses sont calculés à partir du pourcentage de répondants internet exposés et non-compensés, répondant aux séries de questions et à toute question indiquant des informations de valeurs (tels que l'âge) et ayant aussi répondu à toutes les questions.
Les liens aux méthodes de capture internationale d'informations de RIWI Corporation: (qui n'utilise pas de recrus, ou de membres d'un échantillon compensés et n'obtient pas les informations en parcourant ce que les gens écrivent sur internet; ne capture pas les informations dites "de grandes données"); sont ici et là.
Pour conclure, la méthode RIWI brevetée et agrée par ses pairs permet à RIWI, conformément aux lois sur la protection de la vie privée, de récolter des informations sur un groupe representatives d'usagers de l'internet à travers 193 pays, relativement à la fréquence de l'usage d'internet dans le pays pour une population donnée. Le brevetage et le logiciel de RIWI Corporation donne également à RIWI la capacité de repérer géographiquement jusqu'au niveau de la sous-ville.
]]>What Does Merit Mean Nowadays Anyway?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.22950702012-12-13T17:42:08-05:002013-02-12T05:12:01-05:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/If the world were a perfect place, we'd all be fully recognized, rewarded and appreciated for our hard work -- and talent and perseverance would be the only way to get ahead. But in our fast-track world, does merit always mean success? That's what the MeriTALKcracy initiative is all about. Inspired by the motto on the Upper Canada College school crest -- Palmam qui meruit ferat (let he who merited the palm bear it) -- we ask, who deserves it and how has a commitment to earning it shaped one's life? In a series reflecting on this question of merit, prominent UCC alumnae weigh in. We'd like to hear your thoughts too!
"Let he who merited the palm bear it" (Palmam qui meruit ferat). My classmates and I all remember our Upper Canada College high school motto or, at the very least, remember seeing it in Laidlaw Hall, yet we all interpret it in different ways.
One challenge with merit is that, in its modern vernacular, it can serve confusion. "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face," ex-pugilist Mike Tyson once said. Statistically, chance explains the majority of all good fortune (yes, hard work adds to the general equation), as proven by the work of Nobel Laureates and decision researchers Daniel Kahneman and the late Amos Tversky. For me, the UCC motto was both a burden and an instigation to chase excellence, no matter the cost. The second bit stood me well, but the burden persisted. I never could understand why "bad things happen to good people."
We should all know and remember this. Billions go to bed hungry each night. Billions live on less than a few dollars a day. What chance is there for merit without means? And what if, through no fault of your own, fate punches you in the face one day? That punch can, and usually does, come to everyone.
While I sat in Weston Hall at curriculum night for new Senior Kindergarten parents in my son's class three years ago, I revisited these recurring thoughts. And then I met by chance Adam de Pencier, who had taught Latin and Greek at the College following the end of the tenure of the ever-great Terence Bredin (under whom I studied Latin in grades 9-12). "Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred..." I remember Mr. Bredin imploring us all to recognize the beauty in this sad but exquisite line by Lord Alfred Tennyson. There were 600 odd students in the Upper School then. I identified with the 600. Were we all, then, similarly facing doom?
I loved Latin, and, though I have no empiricism to support this gut feeling, feel that it has helped me more than all subjects I ever took in all my studies. A fellow UCC grad, Eric Meerkamper '87, told me we often confuse our favourite subjects with favourite teachers. In my case, Mr. Bredin was my favourite. To most he was the Pit Bull bodyguard (to me he was a wise uncle of sorts), always on hall duty to ensure we were all properly dressed prior to entering the doors to the pews of daily assembly. One day my father, a neuroscientist, lent me an obscure journal article on neck constriction resulting from tight neckties. I showed it to Mr. Bredin. Mr. Bredin, ever one for novel excuses, allowed me exceptionalism, i.e., regular special entry to morning assembly without my top tie bottom affixed. Lovers of Latin are rebellious sorts (we just don't appear thus).
Trouble was, I wasn't as expert in Latin as much as I enjoyed it. Twenty-four years after I graduated from UCC ('88), Adam (now a UCC dad), over coffee, taught me what I never knew. He said it more elegantly, but it boiled down to: "Neil, the motto's in the subjunctive case you numbskull!" Huh? UCC had, indeed, taught me what "subjunctive" meant but I'd forgotten this. It is not in the imperative (as a command) but, in fact, in the subjunctive, as in, "Would that he who....." (or, 'if only he who....') deserves it has a chance at the greatness of life." That could be a person without shelter, a sister, or a nameless, limbless soldier in a war.]]>Order of Canada Celebration was (Sadly) Lacking Ordertag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.16095702012-06-19T16:45:13-04:002012-08-19T05:12:08-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/Mary and Philip Seeman, are members of the prestigious Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honour. It is therefore doubly unsettling to me when some of the greatest contributors to the social contract we call Canada are humiliated, most of them getting on in their years. To wit:
Six hundred Ontario medallists (including those who had received Gold Jubilee medals) and their guests, plus dignitaries, entertainers, organizers and volunteers gathered at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto on June 18 to celebrate Queen Elizabeth's Diamond Jubilee. Like the Queen, the medalists, or a goodly portion of them, had 60 years of achievements under their belts so weren't youngsters. There was a profusion of canes in attendance, as well as walkers and wheelchairs, as was to be expected.
But the organizers of this event seem not to have expected it. On a sizzling day in Toronto, the 600 and their guests waited in their finery, waited on hot, crowded stairways while the doors to the Hall remained locked. Some were trapped in an elevator, though finally rescued. Into a valley of weirdness the 600 went.
When the doors finally opened, the mob was met with a bewildering set of new line ups, arranged by alphabet. The X and Z lines went fast but delay upon delay ensued in some of the more popular rank and files. Some names appeared to be missing, hyphenated names being the hardest to categorize in this byzantine system.
Finally reaching the table and hoping to retrieve -- at last -- the precious medal, aspirants were given... a number! This was to be, apparently, a treasure hunt. A search for the meaning and location of the number came next. It turned out that each number stood for a table on which were piled boxes that contained the longed-for medals. People milled around. There were no chairs. Some were fortunate to find pillars to lean against because the crowd was in for another long wait. Incidentally, this would have been an ideal time to pass around refreshments because it was 7 p.m., no one had eaten dinner; many had come from out of town. All were hungry, but only bottled water was available.
The wait was for a Lieutenant Governor proxy to come to pin the medal on the lapel where it belonged. And a dignitary to read out the citation (in one language only). And photographers to capture the moment (to whose benefit was this event? The media or the honorees?). This being done, each medalist received a ticket to a seat in the Hall.
Unfortunately, the Hall has many stairs and no concession was made to canes and walkers, many of which could be seen at the top most floors trying to maneuver steps with no railings amid heavy breathing.
The crowd -- after another long wait (they had somehow run out of printed tickets!) -- was treated to a show which, in part, celebrated the Queen and, in part, showcased Canadian talent. The audience, expecting the event to be (in some small manner at least) about their accomplishments, were understandably nonplussed.
Finally, the show over, refreshments were promised. This announcement was welcomed with applause (for the refreshments). But, at this point, speed was of the essence. Only the young and fleet of foot managed to snag the few hors d'oeuvres that whizzed by on disappearing trays. The canes and the walkers had no chance at all. On the positive side, there was lots of Ontario wine available, and coffee -- both beverages, of course, off bounds for this over 80 set.
An important event, but surely one that deserves better organization. We should measure our country both by how we treat the most vulnerable, and how we treat those who have given so much to help the vulnerable.]]>DONNER PRIZE FINALIST: Obesity and the Limits of Shametag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14410872012-04-23T00:00:55-04:002012-06-22T05:12:02-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/Does the prime minister wield too much power? Is our skilled immigration policy in need of major reform? What role do museums play in Canadian society? Could Healthy Living Vouchers help in the battle against obesity? These are the questions posed by the four finalists competing for the $50,000 2011/2012 Donner Prize, the award for best public policy book by a Canadian. The winner will be announced on Tuesday, May 1. We will post excerpts from each of the finalists in advance of the prize, exclusively for Huffpost readers. Today's excerpt is from Obesity and the Limits of Shame by Patrick Luciani and Neil Seeman, with an intro by the authors.
The global public health industry weirdly takes credit for initiatives that have yielded no return on investment on the path toward reducing the burden of disease associated with excess weight and its associated toll on human health and on economic productivity. There is a conspiracy of silence in the public health industry -- and industry it is, abetted by government collusion interested in protocols that are politically expedient rather than data-driven. This government cabal is unwilling to stand up and shout loudly: We need a bold policy solution that improves the already fraying provider-patient relationship, one that incents all parties to try to fashion bespoke regimens to help patients keep to a healthy weight and/or switch course over time. To this end, we need, first with pilot projects in low-income neighborhoods, to embrace a universe of incentives -- we call them 'healthy living vouchers', i.e., otherwise taxable income available to persons 16 years of age and older -- that create a market of (self-regulated) companies to market services ethically to earn a portion of those dollars.
ON MAY 28, 2008, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
published a bombshell article in the prestigious Journal of the American
Medical Association suggesting that rates of childhood obesity in the
United States had leveled off. A reporter for the New York Times wrote:
'It is not clear whether the lull in childhood weight gain is permanent
or even if it is the result of public efforts to limit junk food and increase
physical activity in schools.
Could this be the public health establishment's greatest achievement
since John Snow identified the Broad Street Pump as the source of the
London cholera outbreak in 1854?
After a 25-year hike in child obesity rates, with childhood
diabetes rates shooting straight up and other diet-related complications
on an apparently inexorable climb, here was a story saying that the
obesity epidemic had perhaps reached a plateau; what's more, public
health campaigns and system-level planning may have had something
to do with it -- or so the media storyline went. In North America and
around the globe, the story was the most widely read academic news
item on obesity reported in the major media in 2008. Dr David Ludwig,
director of the childhood obesity program at the prestigious Children's
Hospital in Boston, called it a "glimmer of hope."
Can the flattening rate of growth in childhood obesity be credited to
public health campaigns -- essentially, to scattered pilot projects such as
anti-junk food posters now peeling off the walls in urban high school
hallways; recent bans on soda pop machines in some schools; and mandated
20-minute physical exercise regimens in inner-city schools?
They may have some impact among some kids, but not much, by all
accounts. A recent National Bureau of Economic Research study by
John Cawley, Chad Meyerhoefer, and David Newhouse has found that
while state physical education requirements can make children more
active, they have no detectable impact on teenagers' BMIs or their probability
of becoming overweight. Yet public health advocates will not
give up such 'get moving' approaches: recall the 2010 insight from Jeff
Levi, head of the Trust for America's Health, whose organization found
weight gain escalating across America yet who attributed one statistically
negligible annual drop in the District of Colombia to the expansion
of community recreation centres and public transit -- expansions
that have been taking place in dozens of other states without any slowing
in their obesity trend lines.
Just a year before the JAMA study came out, in 2007, the influential
Institute of Medicine, part of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences,
recommended that junk foods such as potato chips, doughnuts, chocolate-
covered ice cream, and sugary drinks be banned from all elementary,
middle, and high schools. According to the IOM, only through
mandated national standards in every single school in America could
we make a dent in the problem of childhood obesity. So how was it possible
that a year after the IOM announcement, on the heels of the widely
cited JAMA study, the New York Times was speculating on whether
public health bureaucrats had won a major battle by halting the rise in
childhood obesity? Was the public health establishment guilty of self interest
in claiming credit for 'success'?
In statistical terms, the data from the original JAMA study likely
resulted from the fact that all major ascents eventually plateau.
2008 and 2009, violent crime rates reached half-century historic lows in
cities like Los Angeles and New York. It is now generally accepted that
demographic trends -- notably an aging population with fewer young
people in the younger age category most prone to commit violent crime
-- explain the phenomenon of declining crime rates. It is rarely the case
that abrupt statistical changes in the prevalence of social ills -- from
obesity to violent urban crime -- can be attributed to policy rather than
to nature. Americans were all aging at one point and all were growing
taller, but then the rate of aging and the rate of growth ebbed. Did this
signify success in the control of 'height gain'? Even the rise in obesity
has a natural plateau.
That there are ebbs from this peak (as suggested by the JAMA data)
is statistically meaningless. There's a point at which society -- America
being a good example -- won't get fatter, but that should not be
considered "good news." Seldom reported in news articles about the
JAMA study was a quote from the lead author of the report, Dr. Cynthia
Ogden, who thinks that we may have reached "some sort of saturation
in terms of the proportion of the population who are genetically susceptible
to obesity." This is an example of how data can be interpreted
and "spun" in a variety of ways.
For instance, a National Bureau of Economic Research study by Patricia
Anderson and Kristin Butcher concluded that a 10 per cent increase
in the availability of junk food was correlated with about a 1 per cent
higher BMI for the average student. However, the effect of the junk
food appeared strong only for students whose parents were overweight.
Researchers from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden conducted a four-year
study called STOPP (Stockholm Obesity Prevention Project), in the
course of which sweets, buns, and soft drinks were banned from five
schools but not from five others. The proportion of overweight six- to
10-year-olds dropped by 3 per cent in the schools with the ban, while
it climbed by 3 per cent in the schools with no ban. This improvement
was encouraging, but child obesity across Sweden was still rising. A
review of school-based obesity prevention problems in 2008 stated that
out of 14 such studies, the evidence was weak in 10. The authors
concluded:
"Our ability to draw strong conclusions as to the efficacy of school-based
obesity prevention programs is limited by the small number of published
studies and by methodological concerns. Qualitative analysis suggests
programs grounded in social learning may be more appropriate for girls,
while structural and environmental interventions enabling physical activity
may be more effective for boys. High-quality evaluation protocols
should be considered essential components of future programs."
The only other major "good news" media-reported study to have
appeared in the past few years comes from the NPD Group, a Port
Washington, New York-based market research firm. The story, widely
circulated in the international media in 2009, contended that the eating
habits of American children were changing. "And for a change, the
news is good," celebrated the New York Times. The NPD is one of many
major marketing companies skilled at getting reporters to pay attention
to their sound-bite stories, and when it comes to teens and obesity,
reporters always pay attention. The story in the Science Desk section
of the Times was titled: "Kid Goes into McDonald's and Orders ... Yogurt?"
This is what journalists call a "man-bites-dog" story; as such, it made
news.
The NPD data found that chicken nuggets, burgers, fries, and colas
remained popular with the teenage set, but that consumption of these
foods was declining, whereas consumption was on the rise for soup,
yogurt, fruit, grilled chicken, and chocolate milk. Let's put aside the
fact that there are heavily caloric restaurant yogurts, soups, fruits (say,
with granola), spicy grilled chicken (usually accompanied by cheesy,
crouton-laced Caesar salads), and chocolate milk; are public health
campaigns responsible for this "good news?"' NPD analysts insisted
that the global economic meltdown in 2008 and 2009 (and the resultant
decline in restaurant orders for kids' meals) could not explain the shift,
since the costs of healthier foods are comparatively on the rise. Bonnie
Riggs of the NPD said that "kids' tastes and preferences are changing."
Most parents of teenagers would find this astounding.
Left out of the media stories was the fact that young people between
18 and 24 had been eating more at "fast casual" chains,
which are just as caloric. Fast casual chains had simply lowered their
prices and spruced up their offerings to draw away calorie-craving
customers from Taco Bell, Burger King, McDonald's, and Wendy's. Yet
public health opinion leaders jumped on the story as proof of the power
of big-government social messaging to promote healthy weights.
Leann Birch of the Center for Childhood Obesity told the Times: "The
food industry is always saying, 'We're giving people what they want;
that's why we're giving you chicken nuggets, burgers and fries for your
kids.' That's not really true. If kids are given different options and if
parents make them available and let them choose some of those things,
I think quite often we see you do get shifts in eating."
To be sure, kids' tastes are malleable. Parents are an important part of the equation
because what they feed their kids early on will program their taste buds
for many years to come. And what parents feed their children depends,
to a large degree, on how much money they have to spend on healthy
food. But none of this means that the public health policy establishment
has been somehow responsible for the statistical plateau in childhood
obesity reported by the NPD.]]>Shame on DSK, in Versetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13447252012-03-27T11:37:00-04:002012-05-27T05:12:02-04:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/
Did you ever wonder what DSK was doing in his room
When the maid came in with her duster and broom?
Was it something unspeakably common and low
For that seemingly upper crust Socialist pro?
He could have been reading a library book
Or pacing the hall with a peeping-Tom look
(With widened eyes, I would surmise?)
Or calling the porter at night for a girl
Merely to give her a bit of a whirl?
He plies her with port and then maybe with snuff
(I wonder if that would be nearly enough)
He has to put dollar bills out on the table
And show he is master and sexually able
He offers a gown, she accepts with a frown.
Don't do it, you clown! You'll let all of France down.
Too late, too late, you'll rue the day,
Shame on you, honte à vous, DSK.]]>Fat Tax Won't Cut Government Bloattag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.11389792011-12-12T00:20:20-05:002012-02-10T05:12:01-05:00Neil Seemanhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/neil-seeman/
As a measure to increase general revenues, this strategy may work. As a strategy to reduce the severe chronic illness and huge financial costs associated with obesity, it will fail to accomplish anything -- except expanding the power of bureaucrats.
Today, "sin tax" advocates across the West now have an added weapon in their quiver of arguments: Denmark has imposed a tax on all foods with more than 2.3 percent of saturated fat, and it is always easier to introduce a policy that's been done somewhere else. To be fair, Denmark didn't make the logic error of singling out one food group or beverage as the cause of expanding waistlines. But the tax is so insignificant that it will do nothing to constrain unhealthy eating habits.
Many advocates of a sin tax on sugary drinks bristle with confidence; they have no doubt as to why we get fat -- too much "bad stuff" -- and the way to get us to behave is to punish both consumers and producers of products that make us fat. Is the public on their side? Advocates point to surveys that suggest strong support for their position. But surveys are notoriously unreliable -- subject to "social desirability bias" (answering in the politically correct fashion) -- when it comes to issues of taxation for public health reasons. Ask former New York State governor David Paterson who had to withdraw legislation to raise taxes on soft drinks when public opinion turned against him (and when the data showed his tax plan would hurt the poor).
Consumers will say one thing to a pollster when nothing is at stake, but they'll react differently when they become taxpayers.
As much as junk food tax advocates want to believe studies that show a strong colinear positive association between consumption of sugary drinks and obesity, things are not that clear. First, obesity is stung by complexity; we are all challenged by individual issues when it comes to weight gain. If you have a loved one who is obese, you will know that taxing pizza and potato chips will accomplish little. A multitude of factors, a complex interplay of genetic and cultural variables, can drive us to weight gain.
Further, we suspect a "white hat bias" exists in the findings of publicly funded researchers that tends to skew research in a politically fashionable policy direction. The increasing number of funded studies devoted to investigating the policy benefits of sin taxes -- despite recent work of the UK Foresight Commission and others showing the irrefutable complexity of influences upon maintaining healthy weights -- suggests that such a funding bias may exist.
Economic modelling studies are varied when it comes to drawing a straight line between higher taxes and lowering obesity levels. We do know that small taxes on soft drinks are all but useless in changing behaviour, but large taxes in the range of 50 per cent or more might only push drinkers to substitute one bad product for another unhealthy one. People have a way of frustrating policy intentions. Most economic studies that measure the impact of a tax on consumption levels are based on elasticity estimates in simulated models (not with real people) that don't always take into account on how we substitute one good for another.
If taxes are set at exorbitantly high levels -- 100 per cent -- then some people will make marginal occasional exchange for, say, milk instead of sugary drinks. And under this far-fetched scenario -- where food producers would launch lawsuits claiming commercial discrimination and unconstitutionality (and your tax dollars would be forced to defend against them) -- the poor would suffer financially.
What we do know is that the cause of obesity and weight gain since the 1970s is a much more complicated affair than we once thought. Due to "availability bias" -- we all like to fit our preferred arguments into the toolbox we're familiar with -- an economist may tell you that the culprit for obesity is lower food costs for all income earners; a medical researcher may blame a range of genetic factors; an urban planner will make the case that we're fat due to how we design our cities; a sociologist may find an answer in our sedentary life style. Psychologists will tell us that depression is a dominant factor or our toxic relationships are to blame. All of these explanations enjoy some credibility, but as a standalone explanation, they fail.
In the midst of such complexity, what is a well-intentioned policy maker to do?
Politicians are always on the hunt for that silver bullet that will make us change our behaviour. It's not so easy. To make any policy work -- with taxpayer dollars -- we should enjoy good confidence that the outcomes we hope for will materialize and, secondly, that government enjoys the tools to ensure the policy materializes as expected. On both counts, taxing sugary foods fails. As in Denmark, for example, people behaved rationally by hoarding fatty foods in advance of the implementation of the tax. And, more important, the only benefit: Denmark will be seen by the world to be doing "something" about obesity.
Advocates of sin taxes often point to how taxes worked to discourage smoking rates. If taxes can work there, they suggest, it can work on junk food. But smoking rates started falling before higher taxes kicked in and can be traced to the U.S. Surgeon General's warnings in the 1960s. Taxes played a role, no doubt, but smoking had external costs to the user that society wouldn't put up with any longer. Even smokers didn't put up much of a fight.
We have to reboot our brains so we know how to eat and take care of ourselves better. And that takes time, and no government policy will change that overnight -- or even over several years. We need to embrace private sector policy innovation -- pilot projects in multiple areas with multiple income groups -- which experiment to determine, for example, the behavioural benefits and pitfalls of taxes versus subsidies versus vouchers. Experimentation, and sober evaluation, should precede the well-intentioned sense and immediacy of being seen to do something.
