The industrialization of our food and agrobusiness has influenced a paradox in the hungry, obese impoverished people of the Western world. It is what New York Times journalist, Sam Dolnick, calls the “Obesity-Hunger Paradox.” Gluttons used to be associated with wealth, but today, obesity is undoubtedly linked to poverty. The hungriest people are the heaviest. Dolnick highlights this fact using the Bronx as an example.
‘“If
you look at rates of obesity, diabetes, poor access to grocery stores,
poverty rates, unemployment and hunger measures, the Bronx lights up on all of
those,” said Triada Stampas of the Food Bank for New York City. “[Obesity,
poverty, and hunger are] much interconnected.”’
Fresh foods are scarce and
processed foods, stripped of their nutrition and pumped full of chemicals, are
the norm for the middle and lower classes in middle-income and wealthy nations.
To eat local, organic, raw, vegan, “green,” or vegetarian, etcetera is a
privilege within the western food infrastructure. Having a healthy,
chemical-free, natural diet is now a luxury reserved for the upper-middle class.
The University of Washington’s
Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation touches on this paradox in the 2012
Global Burden of Disease (GDB) report. In the report, it is articulated
that while people are living longer the quality of life is depleted by
increased disease. The GDB approach, at its core, believes people should
ideally live long lives in full health. The goal of the GDB is to measure the
gap between what is ideal and what is actually happening in the global public
health arena. Their 2010 findings show that heart disease and diabetes is up
thirty percent. They claim that 80% of healthy years are lost to
non-communicable diseases, and poor diet is one of the top contributors
(Sub-Saharan Africa excluded). In rich countries, this percentage increases
even more! According to GDB 2010, “risk factors responsible for the largest
number of disability life years were physical inactivity and diets high in
sodium, low in nuts and seeds, low in whole grains, low in vegetables, and low
in seafood omega-3 fatty acids.” These deficiencies have a glaring impact on
cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. High BMI has also skyrocketed
since 1990 to present day by 82%.
The food infrastructure in upper
middle class nations needs to change and not just for the sake of the health of
the lower class. I would argue that the expensive food market for the wealthy
are often products of exploitative farming around the world in some of the
world’s non-industrialized nations. Health foods, exported from nations with
“antiquated” farming technologies, are exploited and the nutritional foods from
poorer countries are swiftly bought to feed the mouths of the wealthy in “the
West”. Take Fiji Water for example; Fiji Water, from Fiji, is shipped around
the world to be bought by the wealthy stupid enough to buy bottled water.
Little does the consumer know that one-third of Fijian people do not even have access to clean
drinking water! How about quinoa (pronounced KEEN-WAH)? Do you know where it
comes from? The new quinoa fad has left the people it’s native countries, like
Bolivia and Colombia, unable
to afford the super food that once
nourished their communities. The West takes their food and replaces it with
cheap, nutritionally empty, packaged products.
The food infrastructure of the
industrialized world, which ultimately affects the non-industrialized world,
needs to change for the sake of global public health.
Watch in terror.
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