The high and rapidly rising adult obesity rates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand are associated with major health risks, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, and some forms of cancer; large health care costs; and premature deaths annually. For...

Vitamin A deficiency (VAD) affects millions of people world-wide, causing serious health problems. Golden Rice (GR), which has been genetically engineered to produce beta-carotene, is being proposed as a remedy. While this new technology has aroused controversial debates, its nutritional impact...

By taking a rare opportunity to have both pre- and post-disaster survey data in Nicaragua in 1998 and 2001, we estimate the direct impacts of Hurricane Mitch on long-term child health status, measured in height-for-age z-scores, in the pooled cross section model. Especially, we focus on children...

More than one billion adults are overweight worldwide, and more than 300 million of them clinically obese, raising the risk of many serious diseases. Only 3.6 percent of Japanese have a body mass index (BMI) over 30, which is the international standard for obesity, whereas 32.0 percent of...

While obesity is a growing problem that entails considerable costs, its causes for individuals are not yet well understood in economic terms. Three explanatory approaches are explored: obesity as a rational decision pursued by the individual, obesity as a problem of too little information and...