06.01.16
Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand | Audio

Mind-Body Problems


For the first time in more than 20 years, the Food and Drug Administration overhauled the Nutrition Facts label, increasing the type size to highlight serving sizes and total calories in a package (and a package is often a stealth serving size).

But how much can labels can change behavior? Michael heard a recent CDC report about how smoking in America is at an all time low:

It has nothing to do with information that’s printed on the packages or people making cost-benefit or cost-risk calculations…

Two things were named as the biggest reasons. One is cigarette taxes, which simply make it prohibitive to buy cigarettes for a lot of people, and secondly, the inconvenience imposed by no-smoking bans that are almost everywhere now in American life and increasingly around the world.

Also mentioned:

Thanks to Mayo Clinic Transform 2016 for sponsoring this episode.

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Posted in: Arts + Culture, Health + Safety, The Observatory




Michael Bierut + Jessica Helfand Jessica Helfand, a founding editor of Design Observer, is an award-winning graphic designer and writer. A former contributing editor and columnist for Print, Eye and Communications Arts magazine, she is a member of Alliance Graphique Internationale and a recent laureate of the Art Director’s Hall of Fame. Jessica received both her BA and MFA from Yale University where she has taught since 1994. In 2013, she won the AIGA medal.

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