Written By Sherwood Kohn
Not too many years ago, world health and agriculture experts were deeply concerned that the exploding population of the earth would soon exhaust food producers’ ability to feed everyone.
Pundits wrung their hands and predicted rolling global famine; thousands, perhaps millions of people dying of hunger because farmers were unable to provide enough meat, fruit and vegetables to meet the nutritional needs of an expanding world population.
Now the World Health Organization (WHO) tells us that “globally, there are more than 1 billion overweight adults, at least 300 million of them obese.” The obvious conclusion: Many people have too much food.
The dire predictions of inadequate agricultural production appear to have been inaccurate. In many countries, people are increasingly dying of diseases caused by overweight, i.e., type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular problems, hypertension, stroke and cancer.
What happened?
WHO attributes the “rising epidemic” of corpulence to “profound changes in society and in behavioral patterns,” as well as “economic growth, modernization, urbanization and globalization of food markets,” among other forces, including “large shifts toward less physically demanding work.”
But we are constantly bombarded with reports of thousands of people starving to death. How can that happen while billions get fat?
One possible answer is that in many countries, the plentiful food that the rest of the world produces is not getting to people, despite efforts by the developed nations-the United States included-to ship boat and planeloads of food in country.
Part of the reason: Man’s inhumanity to man. According to a recent BBC report citing 119-nation study by a U.S. think-tank, the International Food Policy Research Institute, armed groups-particularly those in sub-Saharan Africa-“are using hunger as a weapon by cutting off food supplies, destroying crops and hijacking relief aid.”
Poor harvests are another part of the problem, but given the vagaries of nature, they always will be.
It seems supremely ironic that well-meaning agronomists, having made much progress in solving the problem of feeding a swelling population, are confronted with a situation in which part of the world is gorging itself on food and another part is starving. But war-and the human condition-are full of ironies.
