Awards

• Short-listed for The Donner Prize awarded by The Donner Canadian Foundation 2012 (Canada)

Overview

Obese individuals are twice as likely to experience heart failure as non-obese people. More than eighty-five per cent of type 2 diabetes sufferers are overweight. And in the United States, obese and overweight individuals make up more than two-thirds of the adult population. Public health organizations and governments have traditionally tried to combat obesity through shame-inducing policies, which assure people that they can easily lose weight by eating right and exercising. This generic approach has failed, as it does little to address the personal, genetic, and cultural challenges faced by obese individuals. XXL directly confronts the global public health sector by proposing an innovative, alternative policy - the 'healthy living voucher' - for decreasing high calorie consumption and its related health problems. Neil Seeman and Patrick Luciani argue that many public health campaigns have made the problem of obesity worse by minimizing how difficult it is for individuals to lose weight. XXL challenges governments to abandon top-down planning solutions in favour of bottom-up innovations to confront the obesity crisis.

Full Product Details

9780772786289

Table of Contents

Reviews

This book takes a fresh, bold, and deep look at an important human error stemming from the illusions of control and the overestimation of knowledge of the human body and behavior. It shows the mistakes committed when governments, in a top-down and nave manner, try to control our biology. -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Distinguished Professor, New York University Polytechnic Institute and author of New York Times best-sellers The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness 'This book provides the one thing that's sorely lacking amidst the cacophony of claims about what will fix the obesity crisis: A recognition that this is a massively multi-factorial problem utterly resistant to universal, simple solutions, and that individuals require customized strategies for losing and keeping off weight. The idea that public policy can and must support individualized weight-loss plans is as close to a winner as we're likely to see.' -- David H. Freedman, best-selling author of Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us - And How to Know When Not to Trust Themm, and contributing editor of Inc. Magazine 'Messrs. Seeman and Luciani's suggestions will annoy both the left and the right. Market forces are anathema to the top-down thinking of many on the left, and handing money to the undeserving is anathema to many on the right. But the very fact that their idea defies conventional wisdom suggests that it is a good one.' -- Matt Ridley, international bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome

This book takes a fresh, bold, and deep look at an important human error stemming from the illusions of control and the overestimation of knowledge of the human body and behavior. It shows the mistakes committed when governments, in a top-down and na?ve manner, try to control our biology. -- Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Distinguished Professor, New York University Polytechnic Institute and author of New York Times best-sellers The Black Swan and Fooled by Randomness 'This book provides the one thing that's sorely lacking amidst the cacophony of claims about what will fix the obesity crisis: A recognition that this is a massively multi-factorial problem utterly resistant to universal, simple solutions, and that individuals require customized strategies for losing and keeping off weight. The idea that public policy can and must support individualized weight-loss plans is as close to a winner as we're likely to see.' -- David H. Freedman, best-selling author of Wrong: Why Experts Keep Failing Us ? And How to Know When Not to Trust Themm, and contributing editor of Inc. Magazine 'Messrs. Seeman and Luciani?s suggestions will annoy both the left and the right. Market forces are anathema to the top-down thinking of many on the left, and handing money to the ?undeserving? is anathema to many on the right. But the very fact that their idea defies conventional wisdom suggests that it is a good one.' -- Matt Ridley, international bestselling author of The Rational Optimist and Genome

Author Information

Neil Seeman is director of the Health Strategy Innovation Cell and a senior resident in health system innovation at Massey College, University of Toronto. Patrick Luciani is a senior resident at Massey College, University of Toronto.

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