Our Book in the Spotlight this week has already received some attention from both sides of the border.
Neil Seeman and Patrick Luciani’s XXL: Obesity and the Limits of Shame directly confronts the global public health sector by proposing an innovative, alternative policy – the ‘healthy living voucher’ – for decreasing high calorie consumption and its related health problems. Neil Seeman and Patrick Luciani argue that many public health campaigns have made the problem of obesity worse by minimizing how difficult it is for individuals to lose weight. XXL challenges governments to abandon top-down planning solutions in favour of bottom-up innovations to confront the obesity crisis. Can healthy living vouchers work? This excerpt from the Introduction of XXL explains Seeman and Luciani’s choice-based strategy.
Featured in the Wall Street Journal, the National Post, and in an interview in this week’s issue of Maclean’s, Neil Seeman and Patrick Luciani are urging the government and providers of goods and services everywhere to stop shaming people into losing weight, but rather spend the money on helping people to find a healthy lifestyle that fits them.
To learn more about XXL be sure to tune in to CNBC on Wednesday April 6th at 10:45 am for Seeman and Luciani’s interview on Squawk on the Street. For an opportunity to talk with the authors, please join UTP in celebrating the launch of XXL at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto on Thursday April 14th at 7 pm. Neil Seeman and Patrick Luciani will be in conversation with Maclean’s Editor-at-Large Kate Fillion.
