Avoiding extremes: tackling world’s obesity and hunger crisis

Overfed and underfed: global food extremes by Joseph Chamie.

Chamie’s paper draws attention to the twin challenges the world at this moment is faced with- acute hunger and obesity, and writes – “The two food extremes — chronic undernourishment and obesity — are worldwide challenges, impacting the wellbeing of more than one-fifth of humanity. Widespread chronic undernourishment, especially in Africa and Asia, has resulted in increased levels of misery, child wasting/stunting, morbidity and premature mortality.

Many have concluded that the current food shortages encompassing approximately one billion people constitute the largest humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II.”

Efforts are being channelled towards solving this crisis, but “two critical questions concerning undernourishment and obesity remain largely unanswered. What to do when millions of people, not able to grow or buy sufficient food, become chronically undernourished? What to do when millions of people put on so much weight that they become obese?”.


So, what do you think of these issue?

See full write up here:  http://www.thedailystar.net/perspective/overfed-and-underfed-global-food-extremes-1422997

 

On access to housing as human rights?

‘Housing should be seen as a human right. Not a commodity’ by Patrick Butler

In February 2017, Butler highlighted the housing situation in top cities and the challenge of modernisation as there is the turning of home construction options to investments for luxury accommodation- he appears to softly tread this issue through the lens of another observer…

consider this excerpt-
“How does it make me feel? One, too much inequality. People talk about income inequality: where it manifests so clearly is housing inequality … I see a society that doesn’t care about the most vulnerable. It’s mind-boggling to me that people could spend so much money and know that at the same time none of that money is assisting the poorest people in terms of housing. It’s a pretty bleak picture.” “
‘Financialisation’ at the expense of the welfare of poor or middle- class families? Are there progressive options for all?
Source: http://www.thedailystar.net/perspective/overfed-and-underfed-global-food-extremes-1422997