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As if there were not enough plagues and pests on humanity, we were presented to the mother of all threats – the Great World Syndrome – which will probably soon be reduced to the acronym GGS.
The British medical journal, once fusty The lancet, meeting in a "Lancet Commission" with the University of Auckland, the World Obesity Organization and the School of Public Health Milken Institute, has just published an impressive but virtually illegible paper on the Great Global Syndemic – the serious combination of the epidemics of obesity, undernutrition and climate change that are now lying in wait for us.
Although I am sure that the 44 commissioners who drafted the Syndemic report are quite right to throw a spotlight on the crisis and call for urgent action, I confess that I found the text in fine print of life insurance policies.
This reminded me of the shocking recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which probably warned us accurately that we were only 12 years old to take serious steps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. CO2, but then blinded us with so many obscure and academic shortcomings. the science that most political leaders will almost certainly have fallen back into political inertia.
The lancet The report confuses us with horrible language as "obese" and "consumptogenic" and presents us with governance challenges that "are contextualized in the context of contemporary changes in global, national and local governance systems". He then rallies to action around six principles, nine recommendations, four essential strategies and twenty actions – and I confess that I have now forgotten each of them. If the SGG is really a crisis, we need a much more efficient way to run our adrenaline.
What I remember is really alarming. The increasingly frequent crises of obesity, malnutrition and climate change certainly seem to become a real storm capable of exterminating humanity. I'm not so sure of their argument that all three are integrally related, but the
The argument that the "big food" plays a malicious role in all three cases is well presented.
This is probably why the major food multinationals have come together to condemn the report as "deeply irresponsible".
Obesity, which according to the commissioners is a disease rather than a symptom of laziness and human self-indulgence, is at the center of the report's concerns. It is force-fed by a global food industry more concerned with its profits than global nutrition.
"Large food companies and their sectoral badociations have a dominant political role and are explicitly motivated by a fiduciary obligation to focus on financial returns for investors," he says. "The most profitable products come from ultra-processed and large-scale products marketed around the world – mbad-produced, long-life food products that are generally high in fat, salt and sugar."
Cosseted by annual grants of more than $ 500 billion, these companies
stay in the midst of a global obesity crisis that causes diseases costing us over $ 2 trillion a year. Obesity among girls has increased eightfold over the past four decades and by 10 in boys, the report says. This means that 14.9% of all women and 10.8% of all men (about 2%)
Billion people in total) are now clinically obese, with about 9% of the world's population suffering from diabetes. Obesity-related diseases cost 4 million deaths annually and 120 million "disability-adjusted life years" or "DALYs".
This means that obesity is now a global problem almost as serious as poverty and undernourishment, which costs $ 3.5 billion a year and leaves 155 million children delayed, 52 million people wasted and 815 million people chronically undernourished.
And at the heart of both problems The lancet Commissioners discover a "food stuff" industry that is poorly motivated by special interests and conflicts of interest "contrary to the public good and the health of the planet" and generate "an endless stream of attractive incentives to overeating and living a sedentary life. "
It is these companies that are behind the mbadive growth in meat consumption (from 71 million tonnes per year in 1961 to 318 million tonnes in 2014) and "ultra-processed foods" such as crisps, crisps, ready-to-eat cereals, sugar-sweetened beverages and energy-dense confectionery, low in nutrients,
excessive amounts of energy, fat, sugar or sodium, which by design are very palatable, inexpensive and ubiquitous.
"Industries with special interests, such as transnational food and beverage manufacturers, are powerful and resource-rich advocates who have opposed governments' attempts to regulate or change business activities. tax policies such as the imposition of a tax on soft drinks or the modification of agricultural subsidies.
"The sweet drinks sector (currently taxed in more than 30 countries) has spent nearly $ 50 million in 2016 against 17 to put pressure on US government initiatives to reduce soda consumption," the report says. He adds that research funded by the sector "is five times less likely to find an badociation between sugary drinks and sugary drinks."
obesity compared to other studies ".
For this reason, the Commission argues that governments should hinder the lobbying and "research" of food manufacturers and keep them out of the mainstream of food policy making: "The single most important contribution that companies can contribute to the fight against global syndication is to stop investing considerable effort and resources to oppose the enactment of regulations and tax policies to serve the public good. "
He calls for a global framework convention on food systems that builds on and complements the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. To the initial list of "inalienable" human rights should be added the rights to "well-being" – the rights to human health and the environment, the right to food, the right of the child
cultural rights and rights.
In tabling the report, I found myself in agreement with all his concerns and with most of his complaints, both against "Big Food" and "the inertia" of the public authorities. But I found his long list of principles, recommendations, strategies and actions both "energy dense and nutrition".
poor".
Pious appeals to "move from narrow profit-maximizing models to larger models, better able to provide people, the planet, and prosperity" seem to be light-years away from the real political world of America Trumpian or Brexit of Great Britain. Something more is needed if we want the Great World Trade Union to be
avoid.
David Dodwell conducts research and writing on global, regional and Hong Kong issues.
challenges from Hong Kong's point of view
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