Friday Futures: Obesity

Published August 01, 2009 @ 12:55PM PT

Obesity is hard to think about. We're seeing massive shocks to the global agriculture, as a result of climate change and financial crisis. The developing world is starting to eat more like the developed world. And the whole planet is rapidly urbanizing. The factors push us in different directions, but I think the net result is still rising levels of obesity, especially in the developing world. The wealthy world may see it level off or even decrease.

The shocks to global agriculture may well end the surplus of cheap calories that dominated the food industry in the developed world. Those cheap calories - in combination with automobile-focused lifestyles and an economy based on retail and office work - have driven up obesity rates in the developed world over the last two decades. A change in agricultural production and in the economic structure of the wealthy world might start to bring obesity rates back down.

At the same time, however, the developing world is starting to eat more like its wealthy neighbors. We're seeing meat consumption go up in China, whole grain consumption decreasing all over the world, and over the last twenty years, obesity rates have tripled in developing countries. Inertia alone will keep the obesity rate rising, even if the rate of agricultural industrialization slows.

I think urbanization is going to be the deciding factor when it comes to obesity in the developing world. We know that trend isn't going to change - if anything, global financial crisis will make it happen faster as more people move to cities looking for work. City life is associated with obesity and lifestyle-related illnesses. People who move to the city leave a life based primarily on subsistence farming and the attendant manual labor. They generally end up as factory workers or day laborers, neither of which involves consistent exercise.

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Alanna Shaikh has spent the last ten years immersed in global health; she has worked for NGOs, companies, universities, and the US government on projects that ranged from preventing antibacterial resistance to improving maternal and child health.