Health Public Good

Public Health as a Public Good

The United States has one of the lowest cost food options available to its consumers in the world. For an extended period, people assumed that this was a benefit of capitalism and that competition had helped push down the prices and made food available at lower costs through the market. However, many externalities have arisen in these circumstances that are now pointing researchers to question the consequences of having mass processed food available to consumers. The United States, as well as many other industrialized nations, currently has epidemic rates of obesity as well as the related obesity diseases such as heart disease and diabetes.

This trend is not restricted to just adult and the obesity rates among children have subsequently risen as well. This has made many instructions and activists compare the effects of poor diets and their health consequences to...
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