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Potential psychological accounts for the relation between food insecurity and body overweight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 May 2017

Eyal Ert
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Economics and Management, Faculty of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, 76100, Israel. [email protected]@mail.huji.ac.ilhttp://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/teachers/ert_eyal/http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/teachers/heiman_amir/index.htm
Amir Heiman
Affiliation:
Department of Environmental Economics and Management, Faculty of Agriculture, Food, and Environment, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Rehovot, 76100, Israel. [email protected]@mail.huji.ac.ilhttp://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/teachers/ert_eyal/http://departments.agri.huji.ac.il/economics/teachers/heiman_amir/index.htm

Abstract

We suggest two psychological mechanisms, temporal discounting and feeling of resource scarcity, for explaining the relation between food insecurity and body overweight. We demonstrate how Nettle et al.’s findings could be explained, post hoc, by each of these accounts, suggesting that their data are not rich enough to allow identification of mechanisms that underlie food insecurity and overweight relationship.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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