7 reasons why the world should pay more attention to the war between traditional diet and packaged artificial food processing.

Emmanuel Cassimatis, author of the Accelerating World: Speed vs. Control

A war is taking place, one that is less obvious than Zika, armed conflicts, aids or cancer, one that is rampant and invisible. Across the world, there are now more people who are obese than underweight. 700M people were obese in 2017, of which 110M children. These numbers have doubled since 1973. Worse, there is now a growing number of people who are both overweight and undernourished.

A wave of diabetes, heart diseases and chronic illnesses is sweeping across the world. In Brazil for instance, 9% of children were obese in 2015, which is 3 times as much as in 1980 (US: 13%). In poor areas, this reaches as much as 30%. What is happening? Several trends are at play.

As a starter, let us have a look at what is happening: the proportion of overweight is soaring.

Proportion of overweight, source: OECD

So here are 7 trends that should prompt the world to pay more attention to the war between traditional diet and packaged artificial food processing (and maybe consider global regulations on food?). Many thanks to Andrew Jacobs and Matt Richtel who published a very interesting article in the New York Times International on 18 September.

1. Companies are trying to replace natural ingredients by artificial ones. As much as they can. A famous example is a famous food processing company which used to market infant formula to replace natural breast milk, and was heavily criticized. Likewise, chocolate bars contain an aver increasing part of non natural products.
2. The food industry is growing and taking over traditional diet farmers. Sale of packaged goods has grown by 25% in the past 5 years. Fast foods have grown by 30% over the past 5 years (euromonitor). For most of these companies, developing markets represent 40% sales.
3. The subject is politically sensitive as these companies are large providers of economic growth and jobs. In Brazil, this is 10% of the output, and 1.5M jobs.
4. These multinational companies support lobbies. To stay in Brazil, Anvisa, the body regulating food was defeated several times through many lawsuits originating from lobbies.
5. Poor areas take a heavy toll. Citizens there will happily move from a state where they did not have enough to eat to a state where they eat too much low quality food. This is even more prevalent in violent neighborhoods, where parents prefer their children playing and eating inside (convenience/junk foods)
6. Companies are being innovative but deceitful. Some have come with door to door techniques to sell more chocolates to poor people, who will happily buy cheap foods, unaware of the dangers. Little information is given on what an excessive consumption of these products may mean.
7. Malnutrition is not only short term, it reprograms the body towards accumulation of fat. The need for real nutrients pushes the body to ask for more, creating a vicious circle. And some scientists think malnutrition also has the potential to reprogram DNA for later generations...

Overall, a new paradigm is appearing. As society evolves and grows interests for convenience, status and flavors, packaged food companies are innovating to provide an ever increasing share of low quality artificial foods. Poor people are able to eat more - great except this is more of an awful quality. Some people become overweight and underfed at the same time! Should the world pay more attention to this war between traditional diet farmers and ultra processed food multinationals? Should there be global regulations?