Funmurphys: the Blog

Obesity Has Replaced Starvation

I admit it's an odd sort of good news: Obeseity has replaced starvation as the main problem with world food supply. As a onetime Guidance and Controls guy (GPS isn't guidance, its Nav!) I hope it's just overshoot until we settle into a proper caloric balance:

One of the most surprising news items of 2006, at least to me, was the announcement that there are now more overweight people in the world than hungry ones.

Say what? It was not that long ago that all the experts were predicting that our skyrocketing human population would soon outstrip its food supply, leading directly to mass famine. By now millions were supposed to be perishing from hunger every year. It was the old doom-and-gloom Malthusian mathematics at work: population shoots up geometrically while food production lags. It makes eminent sense. I grew up with Malthus's ideas brought up-to-date in apocalyptic books like The Population Bomb.

Who defused the bomb? Instead of mass starvation, we seem to be awash in food. And it's not just the United States. Obesity is on the increase in Mexico. Fat-related diabetes is becoming epidemic in India. My parents used to tell me when I didn't eat my dinner to think about the hungry children in China. Today one in five people in China is overweight, 60 million are obese, and the rate of overweight children has increased 28-fold since 1985. Everywhere you look, from Buffalo to Beijing, it's ballooning bellies.

Needless to say, reality hasn't caught up to everyone just yet, but with world population set to peak around 2050, the looming problem is aging/shriking populations (yes Virginia, even China) and how will countries deal with that?

Hat tip to TinkertyTonk