Adding fat to the figures

More than four billion people could be overweight by 2050, with 1.5 billion of them obese if the current global dietary trend towards processed foods continues, a first-of-its-kind study has predicted.

Warning of a health and environmental crisis of “mind-blowing magnitude”, experts from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said global food demand would leap 50% by mid-century, pushing past the earth’s capacity to sustain nature.

Food production already hoovers up three-quarters of the world’s fresh water and a third of its land, according to the study published in Nature Scientific Reports.

Providing a long-term overview of changing global eating habits between 1965 and 2100, the researchers used an open-source model to forecast how food demand would respond to a variety of factors such as population growth, ageing, growing body masses, declining physical activity and increased food waste.

They found that a continuation of current trends will likely see more than four billion people, or 45% of the world’s population, overweight by 2050; 16% would be obese, compared with 9% currently among the 29% of the population who are overweight.

“The increasing waste of food and the rising consumption of animal protein mean the environmental impact of our agricultural system will spiral out of control,” said lead author Benjamin Bodirsky. “We are pushing the limits of our planet – and exceeding them.”

Global eating habits were moving away from plant and starchbased diets to more “affluent diets high in sugar, fat and animal-source foods, featuring highly processed food products”.

The study also found as a result of increasing inequality, food waste and loss, food produced but not consumed due to lack of storage or overbuying, around half a billion people will still be undernourished by mid-century.

There is enough food in the world but the poor don’t have money to buy it. –