Earth Talk: Two-sided food crisis
Dear EarthTalk: I understand a recent government report concluded that our global food system is in deep trouble, that roughly 2 billion people are hungry or undernourished while another billion are over consuming to the point of obesity. What’s going on?
- Ellie Francoeur, Baton Rouge, La.
The report in question, the Global Farming & Futures Report, synthesized findings collected from more than 400 scientists spanning 34 countries, and was published in January 2011 by the British government’s Department for Business Innovation & Skills. Its troubling bottom line conclusion is that the world’s existing food system is failing half of the people on the planet.
Economic inequality among nations and other factors have contributed to a global food system whereby a billion people are hungry (lacking access to sufficient amounts of macronutrients, e.g. carbohydrates, fats and proteins), another billion suffer from “hidden hunger” (lacking crucial vitamins and minerals from their diet), while yet another billion are “substantially over-consuming” (spawning a new public health epidemic involving chronic conditions such as type 2 diabetes and widespread cardiovascular disease).
The report, which was prepared by the research firm Foresight on behalf of the British government, also predicts that the cost of food worldwide will rise sharply in coming decades, increasing the likelihood of food-based conflicts and migration, and that people won’t be able to feed themselves without destroying the planet—unless we can transform the global food system on the scale of the industrial revolution.
“The global food system is spectacularly bad at tackling hunger or at holding itself to account,” Lawrence Haddad, director of the Institute of Development Studies and an author of the report, told the UK’s Guardian. The report warns that an expanding world population that is already overexploiting its natural resources is a recipe for disaster, especially given the onset of climate change.
“Farmers have to grow more food at less cost to the environment,” said Caroline Spelman of the UK’s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which commissioned the report. That may sound simple, but many factors determine if production of a given food is economically viable.
Fixing the global food system will be no small task. Fundamental will be the spreading of existing knowledge and technology to the developing world to boost yields. Other keys to such an endeavor include dramatically reducing food waste—Americans toss as much as 40 percent of their food—especially since food production and distribution accounts for as much as a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. Also, researchers suggest that investing in genetically modified crops and cloned livestock, despite the potential risks, may be “essential in light of the magnitude of the challenges.”
What can those of us in developed nations do? Staying active and eating right is the best way to prevent obesity and ensuing health problems. And choosing locally produced food over that which is shipped in from far away will help reduce our food’s carbon footprint. Also, support the efforts of groups working to end hunger and malnutrition in poor countries. If nothing else, those who wish to help feed the hungry can set their web browsers’ home page to The Hunger Site and click on a button there once a day which triggers a donation of food from one of a number of sponsors to needy people in developing countries.
CONTACTS: UK Department for Business Innovation & Skills, www.bis.gov.uk; DEFRA, www.defra.gov.uk; The Hunger Site, www.thehungersite.com.
EarthTalk® is written and edited by Roddy Scheer and Doug Moss and is a registered trademark of E – The Environmental Magazine (www.emagazine.com). Send questions to: earthtalk@emagazine.com.
Y, Augusta Health team up to fight obesity epidemic
Sixty percent of adult Americans are overweight, and thirty percent are obese. And our bad habits are affecting our kids, whose life expectancy, shockingly, sadly, will be less than our generation, a major step back in quality of life that is entirely preventable.
“It’s not just about the elderly and people who have had heart attacks. It’s not just about those folks with a lot of stress. It’s also about the kids, and the Y has a great representation of children. So we thought, If we come out and have some things that are interesting for the children, we can get them engaged in their own health and health outcomes,” said Arlene Macallero, the director of physician recruitment at Augusta Health, who has been working with the Waynesboro YMCA on the development of a preventive-wellness program that gets the message of heart health out to the masses.
The two organizations teamed up on Thursday to present a community health fair at the YMCA that focused on health education – for kids and their parents.
“There’s a lot of misinformation in the public with regards to their health. They can get on the Internet and go to a million sites, but not all of them present accurate information. The goal of these kinds of events is to educate the public with the right information and to let them know what we have to offer in terms of education programs, classes, et cetera,” said Kara McGill-Meeks, a clinical dietitian at Augusta Health.
The pressures for kids today come from all sides. Schools have been cutting back on physical-education classes to be able to commit more time to classroom learning to meet standardized-testing output objectives. Kids are less likely to be active with parents more protective of them in the face of fears of abduction by strangers and gangs and other illicit activities – and the increasing popularity of video games that have them plopping in front of the TV for long stretches.
And what we feed ourselves and our kids has ratcheted up dramatically in terms of caloric intake.
“We’re not asking people to starve themselves to death or give up everything. We’re just saying, Let’s look at moderation. We’ve been overeating salt, overeating fat, overeating sugar, underactivity. We need to change that whole culture,” said Jane Blosser, the clinical coordinator of the Clinical Nutrition Services Department at Augusta Health.
That goes for all age groups. The buzzword at the health fair was prevention.
“That’s exactly what we’re trying to do – to get the community to change their culture into a preventive culture,” Blosser said. “We’re excited to be a part of that. I want to motivate the community to say, Hey, this is the way to go. And it’s so much cheaper. It’s so expensive to have heart disease, to have diabetes. You can make it through your life with so much less expense related to health care if you just take some simple steps.”
“It’s important that we focus on preventive health,” said Eric Wilson, the fitness coordinator at the YMCA. “This event goes a long way to showing people the benefits of watching your nutrition, getting a good workout in. Obesity is becoming a national epidemic, and the thing is, just reducing your weight alone reduces your risk of stroke, heart attack diabetes, any number of those issues.”
Baby steps. That’s all it takes.
“This is about getting the public in, showing them how easy it is, and how much it makes a difference,” Wilson said.
Story by Chris Graham. Chris can be reached at freepress2@ntelos.net.
AFP InDepth | ‘Babysteps’ to good health
‘Wise choices’ guide overweight, obese back on the right track
Chris Libby feels like he could run forever.
“If you get on a Stairmaster for an hour, I can match you step for step,” said Libby, a fit and trim 173 pounds, after a midweek workout at the RMH Wellness Center.
Not that long ago, Libby could barely walk from the living room to the kitchen. He once tipped the scales at 600 pounds plus, and even after losing 200 pounds was at the 419-pound mark in June 2008 when he checked into Rockingham Memorial Hospital for gastric-bypass surgery.
“The best way I can describe it is it’s like I’ve won the lottery, I just don’t have the bank account to prove it. I feel tremendous. I feel like I can do anything anyone else can do. I have so many small victories. I love being able to walk around in a locker room with a towel wrapped around me. That’s something I couldn’t do. So many little things like that that I can do now,” Libby said. Continue reading “AFP InDepth | ‘Babysteps’ to good health” »
In the News
- State News: Department of Health unveils new anti-obesity plan, posted Tuesday, 9 a.m. Continue reading “In the News” »
Sanford D. Horn: Should the obese fatten the government budget?
Posted by afp on July 25, 2011 · 2 Comments
Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Children’s Hospital Boston and Lindsey Murtagh, an attorney and researcher with Harvard’s School of Public Health, want to extract obese children from their homes and away from their parents for a government intervention.
Ludwig and Murtagh want to place these children in foster care, as if that system is without fault. Should the anorexic be removed from their homes as well? How about the bulimic? How about those with ADHD? What about children who refuse to study? Where should the line be drawn?
This is the same government running a perpetually failing postal system, AMTRAK, motor vehicle departments and public schools at federal, state and local levels. This is another example of an overreaching government exerting their kung-fu grip on the American people. The continuing notion that government can better raise our children should put fear in our hearts and minds not unlike that of Nazi Germany.
Government is partially responsible for the rise in childhood obesity. Examine the fat-laden school lunches and now breakfasts shoved down the throats of low-income students. How many schools have eliminated physical education, extra-curricular sports and other exercise-based activities in the name of budget cuts? Society will pay the piper regarding the rising cost of health care and dependency upon Medicare and Medicaid.
Also consider the numerous teens unable to secure part-time and/or summer employment. The overrun of illegal aliens storming our borders to “do the jobs Americans won’t do,” the oft-repeated mantra of many turning a blind eye to the epidemic of illegal immigration, keeps ever-fattening teens on the couch.
Make no mistake; parents also must carry the weight of irresponsibility for stuffing their children with fast food and allowing them to lounge around playing video games or enjoying faux lives on-line.
Here’s an idea for a job creator: parenting school. Folks need licenses to drive, teach, work as accountants, electricians and plumbers, but not the most vital of all jobs – parenting.
Yes, the American people have a collective obesity problem, but so too does the government who instead of cutting its own fat, wants to add more bureaucracy and spend more money it does not have on programs that will ultimately fail like their numerous predecessors. Stop spending tax-payer money on public school diversity manuals as in Nebraska and get the children into the gym.
Filed under Blogs · Tagged with david ludwig, obese children, obesity, sanford d. horn