Barry Popkin
The World Is Fat

2009 Season

Barry M. Popkin has a Ph.D. in economics and is Professor of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the University's Interdisciplinary Center for Obesity.

Popkin, whose expertise in both nutrition and economics makes him uniquely qualified to write this book, compares our lifestyles today with those of half a century ago through the stories of five families living in the United States, Mexico, and India. He shows how increasing access to media and exposure to advertising, a powerful food industry, the rise of Wal-Mart like shopping centers, and a dramatic decline in physical activity are clashing with millions of years of human evolution, creating a world of overweight people with debilitating health problems such as diabetes. Ultimately, Popkin contends that widespread obesity is less a result of poor individual dietary choices than about a hi-tech, interconnected world in which governments and multinational corporations have extraordinary power to shape our everyday lives.

Bibliography

The World is Fat (2008)