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Researcher Spotlight
Deborah Cohen
Senior Natural Scientist
Deborah Cohen is a senior natural scientist at the RAND Corporation. Her areas of interest include how structural environmental factors—social and physical—influence health. She has studied how community characteristics affect physical activity among adolescent girls and analyzed…
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RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2013 RAND Corporation. Last Modified: October 11, 2012 Site Feedback »
RAND® is a registered trademark. Copyright © 1994-2013 RAND Corporation. Last Modified: October 11, 2012 Site Feedback »
This commentary appeared in New England Journal of Medicine on October 11, 2012.
A basic misconception has stymied our response to the obesity epidemic: the belief that food-related decisions are consciously and deliberately made. Our reluctance to interfere with or regulate the food environment is a direct consequence of the belief that people's food choices reflect their true desires. However, given the large proportion of people who claim that they want to lose weight and the small proportion who are actually able to do so, we must concede that human behavior doesn't always conform with professed goals....
The remainder of this op-ed can be found at nejm.org.