Comment by scythe

>nother popular argument is that it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know how effective Chile’s reforms were because there was no good comparison group. There’s no comparable data from a neighboring country, such as Argentina, and it may be that Chile’s children would have gained weight faster if the reforms hadn’t passed.

>It’s a valid concern, but the data show that Chile’s obesity rates weren’t rising in the years before the reform.

This last sentence is a real 'wat' moment. Practically every country has rising obesity rates. So I went looking for some data and found that over the whole population, obesity rates in Chile were rising rapidly prior to 2016. And also after 2016. If there has been any effect it's pretty small.

https://statbase.org/data/chl-prevalence-of-obesity-among-ad...

If you add in Argentina you see a bigger effect from the Argentine economic crisis at the turn of the century than you do from anything else.