But the effects of diet on cancer are more subtle than the effect of smoking , so traditional ways of controlling consumption may not be appropriate. The prospect of cancer warnings on sausages or punitive taxes on salamis has the distinct feel of a sledgehammer taken to a nut.

To generate a proportionate response, governments should be prepared to look at other ideas. The new science of econophysics could help. This discipline uses physics-like models to explain the habits, fashions and the behaviour in crowds of ordinary people and is being applied to everything from trading strategies in the money markets to rioting behaviour. The approach could give insights into the kind of strategies that might change eating — and smoking — habits in appropriate ways.

Contributors of these 20 articles describe their research as they aim to capture universal codes as manifested differently in diverse parts of the same body of natural phenomena. The first articles largely address econophysics with such topics as a thermodynamic formulation of economics, zero-intelligence models of limit-order markets, managing the evolution of a competitive multi-agent population, the growth of firms and networks, income and wealth distribution, money-transfer models, and the econophysics of stock and foreign currency exchange markets.

H. Eugene Stanley, a physics professor at Boston University, uses the phrase "econophysics" to describe a new field of research that applies physics principles to economics. He and several other academics have developed a formula they say can be used to estimate economic volatility of nations.