Food Bytes: Nibbles from the end of 2018

Food Bytes is a weekly blog post of “nibbles” of information on all things food and nutrition science, policy and culture.

GLOBAL NUTRITION REPORT

The Global Nutrition Report was released this November. The news is not great. The report revealed that the global burden of malnutrition is unacceptably high and now affects every country in the world. But it also highlighted that if we act now, it is not too late to end malnutrition in all its forms. In fact, we have an unprecedented opportunity to do so. Steps have been taken in understanding and addressing malnutrition in all its forms, yet, the uncomfortable question is not so much why are things so bad, but why are things not better when we know so much more than before? Check it out and read all the deets.

CAN OUR DIETS SAVE THE PLANET?

There is much more to discuss than just a “byte” but we published a Nature article showing that what you eat does matter if you want to save the planet. Beef is the big outlier. Those people or in aggregate, countries who eat a lot of red meat (hello the lovely US of A), could dramatically reduce green house gas emissions stemming from agriculture. Refute the science all you want livestock industry, but the science is pretty clear. A lot of press was written up on the paper, and the Guardian does a nice summary.

ROTTEN

Netflix released a food docuseries last year entitled Rotten, and I finally got around to watching all 6 episodes. It is actually quite good, and I think, quite unbiased (as opposed to many food documentaries). It delves into aspects of different food supply chains and presents a slighly terrifying picture. Like how must honey we buy is adulterated and not really honey at all, food allergies that kill, the collapsing/ed cod industry, the underworld of garlic and big corporations out to squeeze the smallholder, and it goes on and on. The show exposes the complex, corrupt nature of our global food system and the many industries feeding that, leaving you questioning where your food comes and who controls it. Good stuff. Hope there is a season 2.

Good enough

As we begin a new year, I have noticed a common theme on twitter and newsfeeds -- How rough 2018 was for so many people, and how much they looked forward to its end. The Washington Post wrote, “…around the globe, 2018 was a year of enduring complex conflicts.”

I would agree that sometimes, it seems the world really is on its knees. With the white house in complete chaos, picking fights with everyone from Mexico to China, the looming Brexit, the DRC, Yemen and Syria in disarray, and the “demise of the liberal order” with right wing populist Bolsonaro winning the Brazilian elections, the political climate is alarming to say the least. The violence we do to each other seems never ending – particularly in the U.S. with gun-related injuries and deaths continually plaguing Americans. Climate change is barreling down on us, with natural disasters ramping up, becoming less predictable and more destructive.

But when we look at the whole picture and try to not react to the sensationalized news feed that inundates us 24/7, things have actually improved for many people around the world. Just look at the statistics of people living in extreme poverty (number of people living on less than $1.90 a day). In the 25 years from 1990 to 2015, the extreme poverty rate dropped an average of a percentage point per year – from nearly 36% to 10%. That is a massive decline! During the same time period, the mortality rate of children under the age of five has fallen by more than half since 1990 – from a rate of 93 (meaning, 93 children die out of every 1,000 live births) to 39.

While the Rohingya situation in Myanmar is devastating, Steven Pinker, Harvard Professor, and author of The Better Angels of our Nature argues that we are doing better than we did 30 years ago and conflicts and genocides taking place around the world have been on a downward trend since the end of the Second World War. And countries recover from conflict. In Rwanda, at the height of their genocide in 1994, the child mortality rate was 282 children per 1000 live births. Now?  38. What a success story.

Rate of deaths in genocides, 1900-2008 (Source: Our World in Data)

In Martha Nussbaum’s new book, The Monarchy of Fear, she argues the same case. She writes that while the present moment “may look like backsliding from our march toward human equality … it is not the apocalypse” and the world is in a much better place than it was following the Second World War in the 1950s in which women, minorities, and the LGBTQ to name a few, had minimal rights and human injustice was rampant. Nussbaum argues that now is “actually a time when hope and work can accomplish a great deal of good.”

The late and great Hans Rosling also agrees in his book Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think. He argues that by looking at data over time and in the right way, one can see that the world is making huge strides overall. It is just a matter of looking at the bigger picture and the larger trends over time. Yes, children and mothers die, yes there are displaced peoples, conflicts and famines, and yes, the world is very unfair. But at the same time, largely, humans are progressing in positive ways and the news and media, and probably your twitter feed, often does not reflect that.

Because The Food Archive is all about food, let me get to my point. While progress is happening, there has been less success globally in tackling hunger and malnutrition. Those who are food insecure, or hungry, is still too high and we are seeing an increase in the actual numbers and prevalence of people who are hungry over the last two years. However, when looking at the prevalence over a longer period of time, since 2005 those who are hungry in the world have declined from 14.5% in 2005 to 10.9% in 2017. On the opposite spectrum, in 2000, 8.7% of adults were obese, and now, 13%. That 13% equates to 678 million people in the world who are struggling with obesity, or an unhealthy body mass index.  The trends show increases across the board.

Prevalence of obesity is rising among adult men and women over time (Source: Global Nutrition Report)

That said, as reported by the Global Nutrition Report, there are gleams of hope. Stunting, or chronic undernutrition has been declining. In 2000, 33% of children under the age of five were stunted and now, in 2017, 22%. That is almost a 50% decrease. Asia has made significant progress in stunting going from 38% to 23% as has Latin America and the Caribbean declining from 17% to 10% and Africa from 38% to 30%. The question is, why and how? Places like Nepal, Bangladesh and Lesotho have seen significant declines in stunting while still being quite poor. There are many researchers and publications that are trying to understand why these countries have witnessed success, but I think we can argue that it is a combination of interventions from diet, health care, sanitation and hygiene as well as factors not having to do with nutrition at all – like income generation, women’s status, and jobs and remittances.

So what do I hope 2019 looks like? While progress isn't inevitable, and everything doesn’t always get better for everyone all the time, progress is happening in both small and large ways. We need to seek out that progress, learn from what worked, and get into a mindset of problem-solving. We know a lot about what has worked and why, particularly in places where hunger and undernutrition has rapidly come down – look at China, look at Brazil, look at Ethiopia! We also have pockets of success in tackling poor diets, and overweight and obesity. Effective soda taxes in Mexico! Easy-to-read labels on the front of packaged foods high in sugar, fat and salt in Chile! Traditional diets being kept alive in places like Japan and Italy! Obesity rates actually coming down in some states of the U.S. – shocker!

I am well aware of broken resolves, so I refuse to say this year will be better than the last. It is not that I have completely lost faith in humanity and the endeavor it brings, it is just that I think we will need to find the stitched pockets of progress and small glimmers of hope as the basis of our knowledge to move forward. Now, one could argue that seems like a pretty lame new year’s resolution, and instead we need grand-scale, disruptive change. But for me, now, with our current state of affairs, I think that perspective is as good as it gets. And that is good enough.