Posted on 07/24/2012 1:51:30 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
ScienceDaily (July 23, 2012) — With widespread hunger continuing to haunt developing nations, and obesity fast becoming a global epidemic, any number of efforts on the parts of governments, scientists, non-profit organizations and the business world have taken aim at these twin nutrition-related crises. But all of these efforts have failed to make a large dent in the problems, and now an unusual international collaboration of researchers is explaining why.
Publishing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers argue that while hunger and obesity are caused by a perfect storm of multiple factors acting in concert, the efforts to counter them have been narrowly focused and isolated. Overcoming the many barriers to achieving healthy nutrition worldwide, the researchers argue, will instead require an unprecedented level of joint planning and action between academia, government, civil society and industry.
In particular, the authors of the papers in the PNAS special feature propose an ambitious plan to remake the ways food is grown, processed, distributed, sold and consumed. The plan focuses on innovations that simultaneously take into account the needs of farmers, the complexity of nutrition-related human biology and decision-making, and the power of profit incentives in the commercial sector. The result, the researchers say, is "a roadmap for a transdisciplinary science to support change of sufficient scale and scope" to carve out "an alternative path from tradition to industrialization" -- one that "promotes healthy lifestyles and environments rather than undermining them."
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencedaily.com ...
Uber Global Agri-Nanny State PING!
I’m curious who coined the term “Anti-obesity?” Does anyone know any obesity proponents? Is there a cabal of 400 lb. men waddling around to driving around on Rascals espousing the benefits of being morbidly obese?
I don’t know many who would argue that obesity is a problem, but I think the problem is more a symptom of larger issues in society such as a lack of physical exercise thanks to comfort-controlled entertainment. When I was a kid, climbing a tree, playing cops & robbers on our bikes, hide-n-seek, and swimming were daily necessities to beat boredom. We sweat and ate anything we want without gaining much.
Nowadays kids are eating more and burning less. They’re online playing video games or “socializing” on Facebook. They’re watching one of the thousands of television channels filled with mind-numbing sleaze. Or they’re sitting around their air-conditioned homes complaining that there’s “nothing to do” akin to the kids who look in a refrigerator full of not-instantly-ready food complaining “There’s nothing to eat!”
Society needs a reboot as opposed to being regulated into some level of consumption compliance. Who determines what’s healthy? The government’s been putting out nutrition information for decades, but kids and adults continue to get fat. Perhaps government’s been the problem all along?
Not a good comparison. Hunger, even starvation, mostly happens where some local warlord decides to steal all the food to sell, or he wants to starve some hated minority or tribe. They can deliver all the food they want for those starving people, and they will still starve, because he wants them to. Hunger is involuntary.
Whereas obesity is entirely voluntary. A large number of people want to overeat, and have metabolisms that store such extra food. If they didn’t want to be obese, they would stop eating so much. But it is their choice. There is food, and they choose to eat it.
Importantly, anyone who says government should intervene in this is a totalitarian who wants to deny people the choice to lead the life they want to lead. They see people as servants of the state, not as individuals that have individual goals, hopes and dreams.
Fat people are fat because they have no self control. It is solely up to them.
Do a web search on the terms < fat acceptance > ... you might be surprised at what you find.
The article promotes yet another round of central planning. This time more of an attempt to re-establish the old Technocracy movement where the world would be run by scientists... you know like the science of eugenics.
Probably for the same reason anti-alcohol, anti-drugs, anti-porn, anti-gambling, anti-anything people like to do initiatives fail.
‘WHY?’ duh - We the People did not elect you to tell us what to EAT. On our buck.
Make fat people hungry and hungry people fat so there will be no problem.
All your farm and food are belong to us.
This is just another power trip that will result in the death of millions if people are stupid enough to buy into it.
Ohhh, Unprecedented!? Exciting! /sarc
They want more money for their coffers... academia, government, civil society and industry... They are running out of Tobacco money.
'Cuz they taste funny. :)
easy one.
Because any attempt to help most people only enables their underlying continuous bad decisions which put them in the position of needing help to begin with, and ironically actually simultaniously encourages others to make similar bad decisions and live off the work of others.
Science Daily - sounds and reads like something out of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged. A political site masquerading as a “science” site.
Wha?
We could at least drink and smoke nearly everywhere we wanted during the last depression.
Now, they're going after foods they don't like, movies and football.
I'm glad I only have somewhere between 4 minutes and 40 years to live - probably a lot closer to 4 minutes.
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