COMMENTARY / World

Hunger and obesity are the same problem in the U.S.

When healthy foods are expensive and processed carbs are cheap, you end up with expanding waistlines

What had some researchers puzzled for the longest time was how poorer people who were less likely to be able to afford enough food were often more overweight or obese than people who had lots of resources. | GETTY IMAGES

By Faye Flam
Bloomberg

Oct 17, 2022

Scientific understanding is challenging the conventional wisdom about hunger — now framing it as a scourge that afflicts not only people who get too few calories, but also those who consume mostly sugar and refined starch.

Under this new understanding, people eating the wrong kind of diet can suffer from both hunger and obesity.

A more scientifically accurate view of hunger and obesity couldn’t come at a better time. Obesity affects about 40% of the U.S. population, almost one in four Americans had trouble affording food in 2021, and the price of food has risen more than 11% since this time last year.