Indeed, Dr Wrangham suspects the main cause of the modern epidemic of obesity is not overeating (which the evidence suggests in America, at least—is a myth) but the rise of processed foods.
It details changes such as the rise of processed food and supermarkets, and the fall-off in physical activity as people move from the countryside to the cities. "People come to the city and get fat," said Mr French.
The rise of processed foods and a push for high-yield, single-crop farms, is leading to not only soil degradation and water scarcity, but also unhealthy consumers.
At the start of the new millennium, food represented 11% of international trade (likely more today), with the rise of processed food occurring more quickly than primary agricultural products [ 40].
It turns out that scientific animal diets are as much determined by the history of the industrialization of agriculture and the rise of processed foods as human diets are.
Despite widespread efforts to get people to consume less sodium, intake of this nutrient has increased significantly since the early 1970s as consumption has risen of processed and restaurant foods, which rely heavily on salt as a cheap way to enhance flavor and texture and preserve food.
The Unctad report, for instance, noted the rise of "business process outsourcing," in which companies in countries with high labor costs contract information technology and other service jobs to foreign workers abroad.
Other statistics show that the fall of the fresh vegetable and the rise of the processed meal has continued since then.
A lack of food knowledge and cooking skills, coupled with the rise of cheap, processed foods, is most definitely to blame for this new epidemic.I'm also aware that global food production is having a huge impact on the environment.
While the main elements of cause, impact and solution remain unchanged from the underlying reports published over the last year, some of the inclusions and exclusions reflect the rise of the political process.
