Obesity as collateral damage: A call for papers on the Obesity Epidemic
- First Online:
In this call for papers, we encourage authors to submit articles considering how to change the behavior of the food industry. Here's why.
Since we
Obesity as collateral damage: A call for papers on the Obesity Epidemic
- First Online:
In this call for papers, we encourage authors to submit articles considering how to change the behavior of the food industry. Here's why.
Since we published the Special Section on Legal Approaches to the Obesity Epidemic from the Public Health Advocacy Institute in 2004,1 the Journal has fully engaged in debates over obesity – its causes and how to prevent it. (The JPHP website displays a collection of articles on nutrition and obesity at http://www.palgrave-journals.com/jphp/collections/food_and_obesity_collection.html.) Obesity surely constitutes an epidemic – a global phenomenon, seen in low income, as well as affluent countries. It often coexists with hunger and malnutrition. What are the underlying, root causes of obesity and its public health consequences?
We know that almost every country has created policies to prepare for and to avoid famine and food shortages that might damage their people, and disrupt their economies and social fabric. In 2010, Russia blocked wheat exports when bad weather destroyed its crops. The United States government, since early in the last century, has supported food production through subsidies and other policies, resulting in large surpluses of food commodities, meat, and calories. These policies maintain the price of food at artificially low levels and have reduced the percentage of personal income spent on food to the lowest in the world.
In this artificial market, large food producers and corporations – Big Agriculture and Big Food – became very profitable. The first set of countries to experience economic concentration, starting before the Great Depression – the United States, Japan, and countries in Europe – found that just a few corporations came to dominate each segment of the food industry. These firms integrated vertically to the point where they now own, and increase their profitability from, every step in the chain of production from farms to wholesale distribution of processed foods. In the past 30 years in the United States