Nations that once struggled to have enough food for survival are now experiencing an entirely new food-related problem of obesity, and large corporate food chains could be responsible, The New York Times reports.
In excess of 700 million people worldwide, with roughly 108 million of them children, are now clinically classified as obese, according to research published in September from The New England Journal of Medicine. That means that, as of 2017, more people around the world are now obese than underweight or malnourished.
The frightening result is likely linked to the widespread availability of high-calorie food that has a dearth of nutrients. The Times reports that this troubling statistic is likely the result of large multinational food companies, like Nestlé that have set-up shop in countries like Brazil, replacing their local agricultural ecosystems and largely changing their economic systems.
For example, Nestlé has created a door-to-door business model in Brazil that supplies families with a month’s worth of products. It also allows families to pay on a rolling basis throughout the month.
The company has also changed the economics of farming in Brazil. Local farmers that used to grow subsistence crops have changed their fields to meet the needs of these companies, uprooting crops like corn to replace them with sugar-cane and soy.
As these large food producers and fast food chains move into less developed nations, they present the people with cheap, reliable food. Citizens of these nations have access to meals whenever they want — a way of life that their ancestors never thought possible. However, the access to unhealthy food has caused skyrocketing rates of obesity and health problems linked to being overweight.
This trend is not only found in Brazil; it is a worldwide problem that health experts say is tied to the skyrocketing sales of processed foods. In the past five years, the sale of processed foods rose 25 percent worldwide, and 10 percent alone in the U.S. Worldwide sales of fast food grew 30 percent worldwide from 2011 to 2016.
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