Personal Responsibility and Obesity

A Constructive Approach to a Controversial Issue

The concept of personal responsibility has been central to social, legal and political approaches to obesity. It evokes language of blame, weakness, and vice and is a leading basis for inadequate government efforts, given the importance of environmental conditions in explaining high rates of obesity. These environmental conditions can override individual physical and psychological regulatory systems that might otherwise stand in the way of weight gain and obesity, hence undermining personal responsibility, narrowing choices, and eroding personal freedoms.

Personal responsibility can be embraced as a value by placing priority on legislative and regulatory actions such as improving school nutrition, menu labeling, altering industry marketing practices, and even such controversial measures as the use of food taxes that create healthier defaults, thus supporting responsible behavior and bridging the divide between views based on individualistic versus collective responsibility.

Health Affairs Issue Highlights RWJF Grantees' Proposed Solutions to the Childhood Obesity Epidemic

  1. 1 Reducing Childhood Obesity Through Policy Change
  2. 2 The Economics of Childhood Obesity
  3. 3 Personal Responsibility and Obesity
  4. 4 Childhood Obesity
  5. 5 Predicting Support for Restricting Food Marketing to Youth
  6. 6 Are 'Competitive Foods' Sold at School Making Our Children Fat?
  7. 7 'Competitive' Food and Beverage Policies
  8. 8 Lessons from Pennsylvania's Mixed Response to Federal School Wellness Law
  9. 9 Barriers to Obesity Prevention in Head Start
  10. 10 Policy Solutions to the 'Grocery Gap'
  11. 11 Federal Food Policy and Childhood Obesity

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