How Can We Solve the Problems of Hunger and Obesity Simultaneously?

摘要

Poverty and hunger are serious global issues. On the other hand, obesity and overweight are becoming an issue in both developed and developing countries. Recently, more attention has been directed towards addressing the double burden of malnourishment, which is the coexistence of both under-nutrition and over- nutrition in the same population. In this study, we estimated future per-capita energy intake and future prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) and overnourishment (PoO) for developing countries. Then we considered potential approaches to the reduction of hunger and obesity simultaneously through fair distribution of energy intake, i.e., reduction of the interquartile range (IQR) of the distribution. Our results show that, although economic growth may contribute to undernourishment reduction, it will not completely “end hunger” since some countries will not reach the economic growth level needed to make this feasible. Further, obesity could become a more important issue because the number of overnourished (NoO) would become comparable with the number of undernourished (NoU). We also found that, if a 50% IQR range reduction could be achieved, NoU and NoO could be decreased dramatically. Introducing this type of indicator for consideration would enable us to reduce hunger and obesity simultaneously. Further discussion, however, is needed regarding the levels of IQR reduction targets.