Mind-Body Problems

For the first time in more than 20 years, the Food and Drug Administration overhauled the Nutrition Facts label, increasing the type size to highlight serving sizes and total calories in a package (and a package is often a stealth serving size).

But how much can labels can change behavior? Michael heard a recent CDC report about how smoking in America is at an all time low:

It has nothing to do with information that’s printed on the packages or people making cost-benefit or cost-risk calculations…

Two things were named as the biggest reasons. One is cigarette taxes, which simply make it prohibitive to buy cigarettes for a lot of people, and secondly, the inconvenience imposed by no-smoking bans that are almost everywhere now in American life and increasingly around the world.

Also mentioned:

• Burkey Belser, the designer of Nutrition Facts and the EnergyGuide
• Mark Bittman’s dream food label
• UK National Health Service traffic light rating system
• Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, Screening for Life: Preventing Colorectal Cancer
• Public health advocate Diana Redwood of the dressed as Polyp Man
• Nolan the Colon
• Cleveland Clinic, Empathy: The Human Connection to Patient Care
• Lorrie Moore, People Like That Are the Only People Here
• Tristan Harris: How Technology Hijacks People’s Minds, Design for Time Well Spent
• William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade
• Peter Arno: Michael Maslin’s biography, article in Vanity Fair, Wall Street Journal review
• Flat File from the Herb Lubalin Study Center

Thanks to Mayo Clinic Transform 2016 for sponsoring this episode.

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