Irrationally Obese
I was eating lunch today, an especially fatty one, and came across a quick theory on how the assumption of rational economic behavior is refuted simply by the way we eat. Traditional economic theory assumes that consumers are rationally engaged in balancing the costs and benefits of their actions to produce the highest amount of utility.
Under this logic, becoming obese should have absolutely no regret attached, in fact anyone who has become obese should be marginally happier for each bite they take. The few extra pounds I’ve put on this winter are irrational ones because while I finish off that last piece of pie, I’m discounting the way I’ll feel tomorrow. In traditional econ theory, we are making marginal rational decisions over and over to achieve our physical state and under that definition of utility-seeking behavior, regret should be the last emotion for us to have.
An interesting behavioral economics study would be to see if obesity correlates with one’s natural discount rate. The experiment could go like this: You offer someone 100 dollars today and then you find out how much you would have to pay them tomorrow for them not to take the 100 today and compare the degree of their discount rate with their BMI. Then repeat to find the arch of their discount rate by running the same experiment for paying them the next day, the next week, month and so on. Or perhaps we could just ask people, “In the past week, on how many times have you felt that you ate more than you should have?”
The fact that some people do regret being obese, or slightly overweight, means that consumers do not act rationally and that a disconnect exists between the traditional economic paradigm and reality.
-Jeff
Tags: consumer economics, food economics, food health, health, irrationality
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