{"id":43453,"date":"2019-02-02T12:21:54","date_gmt":"2019-02-02T17:21:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43453"},"modified":"2019-02-02T12:22:40","modified_gmt":"2019-02-02T17:22:40","slug":"malnutrition-obesity-and-climate-change-threaten-our-future-warns-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43453","title":{"rendered":"Malnutrition, Obesity and Climate Change Threaten Our Future, Warns Report"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Malnutrition, Obesity and Climate Change Threaten Our Future, Warns Report<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Lancet says three threats are interacting to create a dangerous \u2018syndemic.\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"SomalianDrought.jpg\"\/
Climate change is bringing crop failures, reduced food production, droughts and flooding, and civil unrest, report warns. Somalian Nuura Omar and her family were driven to an aid camp by drought. Photo from Oxfam<\/a>, Creative Commons licensed.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Lancet calls it the \u201cGlobal Syndemic.\u201d<\/a> The report\u2019s authors say we\u2019re facing three pandemics \u2014 undernutrition, obesity and climate change \u2014 that are interacting to form a \u201csynergy of epidemics,\u201d or syndemic, and it\u2019s a global problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s how it works. Undernourished children in low-income and middle-income countries suffer from stunting<\/a>, which makes them smaller than well-nourished children. But it also makes them more susceptible to obesity (which affects kids and adults in high-income countries even more). By 2015, obesity was affecting two billion people around the world. They\u2019ve been set up to die of cardiovascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes and some cancers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report says, \u201cEconomic losses attributable to undernutrition are equivalent to 11 per cent of the GDP in Africa and Asia, or approximately $3.5 trillion annually.\u201d As we add another billion undernourished people by 2030, those losses will worsen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, climate change is having serious effects on human health, bringing \u201ccrop failures, reduced food production, extreme weather events that produce droughts and flooding, increased food-borne and other infectious diseases, and civil unrest.\u201d Those climate effects, the report says, will end up costing five to 10 per cent of global GDP, while investing just one per cent of GDP could stop the increase in climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lancet report is blunt about why we do so little, citing \u201cthe power of vested interests by commercial actors whose engagement in policy often constitutes a conflict of interest that is at odds with the public good and planetary health.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Malnutrition, Obesity and Climate Change Threaten Our Future, Warns Report Lancet says three threats are interacting to create a dangerous \u2018syndemic.\u2019 The Lancet calls it the \u201cGlobal Syndemic.\u201d The report\u2019s authors say we\u2019re facing three pandemics \u2014 undernutrition, obesity and climate change \u2014 that are interacting to form a \u201csynergy of epidemics,\u201d or syndemic, and it\u2019s a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7],"tags":[141,11528,19540,18196,5499],"class_list":["post-43453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","category-survival-2","tag-climate-change","tag-crawford-kilian","tag-malnutrition","tag-the-lancet","tag-the-tyee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43453"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43454,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43453\/revisions\/43454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}