Globalization is spreading in a world where more than a billion people overeat. And yet, hundreds of millions still suffer from constant hunger pangs
By Gary Stix
In 1963, the threat of death by starvation hung over the heads of about 200,000 Indians in West Bengal and Assam. A few years later, a drought caused severe food shortages in the neighboring state of Bihar. Against the background of such reports, the biologist Paul Ehrlich predicted in 1968 in his book "The Population Bomb" that within a few years the inevitable growth of the population would lead to the elimination of the limited resources and the death of hundreds of millions of people from starvation.
This neo-Malthusian scenario never materialized. The "green revolution" in India's agriculture rescued its inhabitants from the straits and from a situation that required constant external assistance to prevent the fulfillment of Ehrlich's black prophecies. During the past 40 years, India has undergone a fundamental change and now stars as an emerging economic giant on the covers of magazines. The developing world of the beginning of the 21st century deals with the problem of fat more than it deals with hunger - a sociological change brought about by globalization and known as the "nutrition transition". The new millennium marked the first time that the number of overweight people in the world equaled the number of undernourished people. Today, demographically, the number of 1.3 billion people who eat too much is higher than the number of the hungry by several hundred million.
Many foods are now on the tables of rich and poor alike. Coca-colonization, a term that sometimes even pops up in academic papers, has created a global infrastructure for the supply of junk food. The distributors of Coca-Cola sign agreements even at the level of the neighborhood grocery store and supply the shopkeepers with refrigerators and accessories directly to the points of sale. Mexicans, for example, now consume more calories from sugary drinks than Americans. At the same time, the growth of American-style grocery stores led to a more widespread adoption of corn, soybean, and other vegetable oils.
The Green Revolution did prevent mass starvation, but at the same time no technological invention appeared that would stop global expansion at the waistline. Scientists have slowly begun to understand the endocrinology, neurology and genetics of obesity. They even discovered a gene responsible for restlessness that encourages calorie burning. But all these insights have not yet led to the creation of a useful "diet pill". In 1997, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) took "Pen-Pen", a combination of weight-loss drugs, off the shelves, after reports of heart problems it caused. The drug Orlistat (Eli) is now sold without a prescription - after conflicting reports on its effectiveness as a prescription drug, according to some doctors. If it had really achieved its goal, Glaxo-Smith-Kline would have reached record profits of billions of dollars each year from medical prescriptions.
The drug manufacturers are not giving up. They are investigating molecules that block chemicals in the brain and gut that cause appetite stimulation, and other molecules that increase the rate of energy utilization. But drugs will not treat the psychological vulnerabilities that threaten to thwart the best treatments. Recent behavioral studies show that swallowing diet pills encourages consumers to give in to the temptation to eat fattening double hamburgers and spend the weekends on the couch watching reruns of "The Sopranos." And when you intervene in the control pathways of such a primary behavior as eating, you must not forget the possible side effects. In June 2007, Sanofi Adventis withdrew its application for approval of a weight-loss drug called Rimonabant (Acomplia) because it could trigger suicidal thoughts. The US Food and Drug Administration's advisory committee recommended against approving the drug.
It seems that adhering to a lifestyle of eating less and exercising more is the simplest move. However, even the Puritan way of life is controversial. A 2005 study found that the death rate of overweight people is lower than that of people whose weight is considered healthy. Since then, the academic nutrition community, steeped in the rhetoric of the obesity epidemic, has fought with all its might against the sacrilege caused by these results.
If most diets are not effective in the long term - as indeed appears from the many evidences - what will the oils do without a pill and without a weight loss plan? The "fat but fit" movement encourages people to exercise and stop worrying about their body mass index (BMI). Some go even further and adopt social norms instead of epidemiology. Rural women in Niger reject the thin look, and some American urban hip-hop singers embrace obesity and give new meaning to the word phat ["cool" in hip-hop culture, a word that sounds like "fat" in English].
However, the transition of nutrition is by no means uniform. Anyone who visits a humble home in Indonesia may find a fat child sitting on the sofa in the living room next to his malnourished brother, a testament to the contradictory effects of a diet rich in sugars and vegetable oils. The world produces enough food to feed everyone from Florida to North Korea. But often bringing the rice from the field to the plate still poses a challenge. The number of hungry people in the world has decreased, but malnutrition continues: hundreds of millions do not get enough calories per day.
At the same time, the green revolution may already be nearing the end of its power. Grain production has risen steadily since the 60s, when farmers in the developing world began planting hybrid seeds and using fertilizers, irrigation and pesticides, but the amount of land suitable for agriculture has remained constant. The widespread use of pesticides may further limit productivity due to the contamination of drinking water.
Are the genes next in line?
Theoretically, a "gene revolution" based on genetically modified crops may compensate for the flaws of the green revolution. Adoption of the new methods in the 60s, which governments and international organizations encouraged with financial support, happened almost overnight and increased yields immediately. Biotechnological crops in the developing world, however, still have to prove themselves. The private sector markets genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and sometimes charges prices that put the seeds out of the reach of small and medium farms in the Third World. Although some developing countries have tried to grow genetically modified corn and soybeans with some degree of success, the promise that the technology will help regional development, i.e. create genetically engineered crops that can survive drought or grow in saline soil, has not yet been realized on a commercial scale.
Obesity and hunger coexist in developing countries, but the industrialized world faces its own unique nutritional confusion. Carefully designed nutrition plans list the exact number of servings of meat, dairy products, fruits and vegetables to be consumed each day. But despite the changes that the US Department of Agriculture's food pyramid has undergone in recent years, it still arouses growing distrust among many nutritionists.
The scientific basis for national and precise planning of meals is a very narrow basis. Most food studies are based on monitoring a single food ingredient and are unable to identify additional factors that have an impact, genetic or behavioral, that may lead to fatal diseases such as heart disease and diabetes. The need for oversimplification helps to explain the frequent reversals in popular opinion, for example that eating more dietary fiber does not prevent cancer and that a low-fat diet does not help at all to prevent heart disease and colon cancer. Marion Nessel, author of "Simply Eat" - the main article in this issue (starting on page 60) - tries to clarify the picture to the confused grocery store customer by memorizing the mantra: eat less, exercise more, eat lots of fruits, vegetables and whole grains and avoid junk food .
The attempts to eat simply are not much different from what can be called the "Mark Twain Diet". The writer summed up the complexities of energy balances in a diet in one sentence: "Part of the secret of success in life is to eat what you want and let the food solve the problems by itself." Other neo-Tweenians - including Michael Pollan, author of the famous book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" (Penguin Press, 2006) - support the pleasure of eating and less what they call "nutritionism", or the attempt to use food substances as medicine, an attempt that may Paradoxical to fail to prevent health problems. Pollen encourages the consumer to "pay more and eat less" and buy organic products or other quality products that preserve the taste and not only the nutritional value. By his logic, the culinary arts and nutritional sciences should not be constantly battling each other. Both areas must completely reject the vitamin-enriched snack as a substitute for a full meal.
key concepts
* The world escaped the mass starvation predicted by the menacing predictions of the 60s. The "nutrition transition" occurred instead, resulting in the continuation of undernutrition on the side of obesity in the developing countries. In general, obesity is a more serious problem for public health than hunger, but there are very few good solutions to deal with the emerging epidemic.
* The farmers produce enough food for everyone, but hunger continues to prevail due to political conflicts, natural disasters and poverty in the rural areas.
* Agronomists continue to test whether genetically modified crops can help feed the world, while industrialized nations grapple with the idea of "nutritionalism" that sees food as medicine.
To purchase a subscription call toll free 1-800-355-155
