Obese Outnumber Starving People Globally

Posted on Aug 14, 2006

The world now holds more than a billion overweight people and 800 million who are undernourished, a health expert told an international panel. A possible solution: subsidize fruits and vegetables, instead of fat-producing corn crops.

Wanna learn more? Check out Truthdig’s interview with food expert Michael Pollan.

AFP:

The world now has more overweight people than hungry ones and governments should design economic strategies to influence national diets, a conference of international experts have heard.

The transition from a starving world to an obese one had happened with dramatic speed, US professor Barry Popkin told the annual conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists on Monday.

“The reality is that globally far more obesity than undernutrition exists,” Popkin said, adding that while hunger was slowly declining, obesity was rapidly spreading.

There are more than a billion overweight people in the world and 800 million who are undernourished, he said at the Gold Coast convention centre near Brisbane. The world population is estimated at about 6.5 billion.

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