In " 'Sleep - Key to Tackling Obesity'," Neil Stanley argues that since the various government education campaigns to persuade UK citizens to change their eating habits have failed, a different type of solution is needed (2013). Unlike education, which Stanley thinks unlikely to be successful, he presents evidence of a strong correlation between getting less sleep and weight gain, a result supported by fMRI studies of the brain, which together lead him to argue that more sleep is likely to prove a more effective way to control obesity.
First, I like the straight forward way that Stanley uses the evidence to counter what I think is the common idea that more or better education can solve such problems. That idea, however attractive and easy, just seems wrong to me. If it were true, all social and other problems could easily be solved. They have not been. The safe-driving campaigns before every Songkran do not reduce traffic deaths and accidents. The constant anti-drug education campaigns are not reducing drug use in Thai society. The warnings to educate about unhealthy dietary habits are not reducing people's waistlines or heart disease. All such campaigns seem to me a repeated story of failure after failure after failure. I wonder why the same faith in education campaigns is so religiously repeated without any evidence of success? Is it just because its an easy solution for officials and parents too lazy to think critically, or do they have some worse motivation?
Moving on, even better is how Stanley backs up the surprising claim that more sleep is what we need. This certainly surprised me. In fact, I thought exactly the opposite, that more sleep would mean less energy use, and therefore greater weight gain from unused calories. But just because I think something is reasonable doesn't make it true, and it looks like I was wrong again. The only way to find out how the world actually works, whether the planets above us or the complexities of human behaviour, is to actually look at the world, get facts, and then try to explain the results.
Finally, eating and sleeping are two things I enjoy, but it seems there is some conflict here: if I sleep more, I might be inclined to eat less, or at least less of the unhealthy food. But perhaps there is no conflict: why eat sickly muck when you can enjoy more yummy oysters and blue cheese? I guess now I need to put the theory to the test and start sleeping more.
Tonight? Or tomorrow? I like putting things off until tomorrow. Maybe I need a government sponsored education campaign to persuade me sleep more?
__________
Reference
Morning coffee time again already. Did I have enough sleep to reduce my waistline today? Perhaps I should have a nap when I get back after class?
ReplyDeleteI understand your arguments that you try to convince the readers to change their mind, more sleeping and less eating unhealthy food. Other methods of Government to educate people to get less accident and lung cancer are to demonstrate how people avoid these problems and the governments have to pay attention on some people who are in precarious situations. They must take care of these people intentionally.
DeleteThe title makes use of a common English idiom.
ReplyDeleteWhat does put something to sleep mean?
Is it means to bore someone?
ReplyDeleteSee put something to sleep in the OALD
DeleteI agree with your idea that officials and parents may be lazy to find the better solutions which can solve such problems, but I think they should continue launch the educational campaigns till they find the better one because It's show that these issue still be interesting issue for the officials and parents. However, I wish they will find the better solutions in near future.
ReplyDeleteI agree that they might not be able to fine a better solution so they still use education and campaign. But I think education can fix the problems near its root. If they want to demolish drugs from this world, they have to destroy all the drugs and relate things but it is not possible.Therefore, giving education is one way to reduce drug using but there are many reason why people use drugs. It is not because they do not have knowledge but it is because they want to try or follow what others do. That's why I think government should keep giving education and campaigning but they have to launch new effective methods to solve problems
DeleteWan raises a couple of points here that I think are worth following up. I hope someone does.
DeleteWhen Wan writes that "education can fix the problems near its root", what sorts of problems can this fix? I don't think it's ever done anything to help with problems like drug addiction, for example to cigarettes, to yaa baa and to alcohol. But perhaps I'm wrong? Does anyone have a useful counter example here?
DeleteAnd still on the topic of drugs, which is convenient since it's what we are studying next in Quest, should we, or should governments, even be aiming "to demolish drugs from this world"? Why or why not?
As you say, governments might be so lazy that they can't launch some effective campaigns. I think they sometimes don't know what to do with those chronic problems. Plus, they don't have enough researches to support their decisions. Even worse, there is probably some, but social research doesn't be concerned. Above all, we have to blame on some social behaviors that keep continuing those problem while their governments are trying to take action against them.
ReplyDeleteI think that they often do have the research, but they don't want to admit it because it might be unpopular. Does this mean that there needs to be an education campaign to make people aware of the relevant research on an issue?
DeleteEconomic research, for example, shows that legalized abortion reduces crime. Should this be more widely known?
More importantly, should legal and health policy be based on such facts? How?
Ying, when you write about "some social behaviours", what do you mean for example?
DeleteIf you were unsure of or doubted my claim in the comment @ September 30, 2013 at 12:02 AM above, that legal abortion greatly reduces crime in society and you wanted some support, I'm very glad. Had you such a claim that surprised me, I would certainly ask you for some solid support. And this claim about abortion certainly did surprise me, and everyone else, when it was first made by a couple of University of Chicago academics.
DeleteBut both the evidence and the reasoning are solid: making abortion legal does seem to very significantly, reduce crime of all types, from murder, rape and other violent crime to stealing, fraud and other non-violent crime (Donohue & Levitt, 2001).
And I'm very glad those two economists have done all the hard work in their famous (to many, infamous) paper. All I need do is paraphrase their main idea and cite them as my source. And of course refer you to the paper, which is what the list of reference citations below does. The parenthetic citation above points readers accurately to the specific reference citation below, which gives all the information a reader such as yourself needs to find my source and check my paraphrase or quotation.
The first paragraph of the journal paper, as is usual with academic research papers, concisely states the main ideas of the whole paper. It was so surprising that it quickly became a very famous paper, perhaps the most famous paper published in an economics journal so far this century, and certainly the best known by the general educated public outside of academia.
Reference
Donohue, J. J., III, & Levitt, S. D. (2001, May). The impact of legalized abortion on crime. The Quarterly Journal of Economics CXVI (2), 379 - 420. Retrieved from University of Chicago website : http://pricetheory.uchicago.edu/levitt/Papers/DonohueLevittTheImpactOfLegalized2001.pdf