Fatness, Affluence, Adaptation and Hope

Colleagues and I recently submitted a grant application to a large foundation, seeking funds to support the True Health Initiative. The funds, should we be fortunate enough to secure them, will accelerate the development of a global communication campaign to convey the evidence and consensus-based fundamentals of healthy living, and notably, healthy eating. In particular, the grant would support a rigorous evaluation so that we could demonstrate the replacement of widespread confusion and doubts about consensus related to healthful, sustainable eating at baseline, with clarity and understanding by virtue of our efforts. The True Health Initiative is global, and the research project is intended to be as well. Our application calls for targeted interventions, aimed at raising awareness, in five or more countries around the world. Those countries were chosen to represent both places where the so-called "Western" diet is long established, such as the U.S., England, and Australia; and places where that diet is fast replacing local traditions in the wake of cultural transition, such as China, India, and much of the Middle East. While working on this grant, and thinking about its geographic scope, something odd to the point of paradoxical kept pestering me. In the U.S. and much of the long-industrialized world, one of the principal risk factors for obesity, and attendant metabolic mayhem, is poverty. In the U.S., the fattest and sickest among us tend to be the poorest, while afflu...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news