The world's expanding waistline
When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and people worried about how to feed the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor are fat, and people are worrying about obesity.
Thanks to rising agricultural productivity, famine is rarer all over the globe. According to the UN, the number of people short of food fell from 920m in 1980 to 799m in 2000, even though the world's population increased by 1.5 billion over the period. But the consequence of this prosperity brings a new problem and with it a host of interesting policy dilemmas.
Obesity is the world's biggest public-health issue today - the main cause of heart disease, which kills more people these days than AIDS, malaria, war; the principal risk factor in diabetes; heavily implicated in cancer and other diseases. Since the World Health Organization labeled obesity an 'epidemic' in 2000, there have been many reports on its fearful consequences.
Will public-health warnings, combined with media pressure, persuade people to get thinner, just as they finally put them off tobacco? There is now agreement among doctors that governments should do something to help.
Diet by command?
There's nothing new about the idea that governments should intervene in the food business. One of the earliest examples was in 1202, when King John of England first banned the adulteration of bread.
Governments and people seem to agree that ensuring the safety and stability of the food supply is part of the state's job. But obesity is a more complicated issue than food safety. It is not about ensuring that people don't get poisoned; it is about changing their behavior. Should governments be trying to do anything about it at all?