Feeding Frenzies, Here and There

The rising threat of childhood obesity in America is in the Washington Post spotlight this weekend offering a bizarre contrast to recent headlines about worldwide hunger and starvation.

"In ways only beginning to be understood," the Post reports, "overweight at a young age appears to be far more destructive to well-being than adding excess pounds later in life...

"Doctors are seeing confirmation of this daily: boys and girls in elementary school suffering from high blood pressure, high cholesterol and painful joint conditions; a soaring incidence of type 2 diabetes, once a rarity in pediatricians' offices; even a spike in child gallstones, also once a singularly adult affliction...

"With one in three children in this country overweight or worse, the future health and productivity of an entire generation--and a nation--could be in jeopardy."

The inequality mirrored in overfed children here and starving children elsewhere is complex on both sides of the equation.

Crop failures, hoarding, corruption, manipulated food prices, even natural disasters exacerbated by political stupidity (as in Myanmar) are part of the politics of starvation that resist humanitarian and financial aid efforts.

The alarming rise in American childhood obesity has roots in a culture of sedentary pastimes, among other causes, but fast food and nutritional ignorance contribute to an epidemic that may overwhelm our health care system in generations to come, even as increasing economic disparities of the Bush years leave pockets of hunger and malnutrition here that resemble Third World suffering.

If human beings can't get their act together on something as basic as rationally providing and consuming food for the survival of the species, what hope is there for progress on the knottier problems of civilization?