The " Grim Reaper " Beckons !

One of the most respected medical journals in the world is " the Lancet " and it has just released a warning that humanity faces three threats to its long term survival.   It brought together a consortium of forty-three of the world's leading experts on agriculture, economics, human rights, which all interplay in the fields of obesity, undernutrition and climate change.

Put simply, what we are doing now is unsustainable.  Obesity is responsible for four million deaths each year and 815 million of this worlds population are chronically undernourished.  Our inability to manage the food supply means that malnutrition - either undernutrition or obesity - is the biggest cause of ill health and premature death globally.

Here in Australia where we claim an advanced standard of living almost two in every three adults and one in ever four children are overweight, according to the latest Australian Institute of Health and Welfare data.   This problem is exacerbated by inaction by the policymakers who are influenced by profit seeking food companies and a lack of demand for change from the public.   The soft drink industry has lobbied to water down a move to sugar taxes on soft drinks.  A 2017 study found  that food lobbyists were potentially swaying health policies in favour of their corporate bottom lines at the expense of public health.

One of the problems facing the world has been drawn to our attention by the global warming people.  In recent decades many millions have been rescued from poverty as manufacturing moves into countries with the offer of a cheap labour force.  Subsistence farmers earning less than two dollars a day have seen their income increase - and along with that has come a vast change in their diet.

With prosperity comes a demand for - meat.  The undernourished forced to subsist on a vegetable diet quickly develop a taste for meat in its many forms and unfortunately agriculture is responsible for about a quarter of global greenhouse gas emissions and of these cattle are responsible for half of this total.  We simply can not continue to expand the meat industry to meet growing world demand.

The warnings are becoming strident on many fronts.  The amount of CO2 in the air is increasing and warming the planet and it is evident that we are unlikely to hold the world temperature to just a 1.5% increase.  We will have to learn to live with a warmer world  and it is now clear that one of the things that must change is the food we eat.

In all probability we will continue to resist change strenuously until a world food shortage makes a diet change imperative.  But if we continue to abuse our bodies by the obesity that is so prevalent in the richer world, at least there will be fewer mouths to feed when that day comes.