We have a new paper out in the World Health Organization Bulletin looking at the association between an increase in food supply and average weight gain:
Stefanie Vandevijvere, Carson C Chow, Kevin D Hall, Elaine Umali & Boyd A Swinburn. Increased food energy supply as a major driver of the obesity epidemic: a global analysis, Bulletin of the WHO 2015;93:446-456.
This paper extends the analysis we did in our paper on the US food supply to the rest of the world. In the US paper, we showed that an increase in food supply more than explains the increase in average body weight over the duration of the obesity epidemic, as predicted by our experimentally validated body weight model. I had been hoping to do the analysis on the rest of the world and was very happy that my colleagues in Australia and New Zealand were able to collate the global data, which was not a simple undertaking.
What we found was almost completely consistent with the hypothesis that food is the main driver of obesity everywhere. In more than half of the countries (45/83), the increase in food supply more than explains the increase in weight. In other mostly less developed nations (11/83), an increase in food was associated with an increase in body weight although it was not sufficient to explain all of the weight gain. Five countries had a decrease in both food and body weight. Five countries had decreases in food supply and an increase in body weight and finally three countries (Iran, Rwanda, and South Africa) had an increase in food but a decrease in body weight.
Now by formal logic, only one of these observations is inconsistent with the food push hypothesis. Recall that if A implies B then the only logical conclusion you can draw is that not B implies not A. Hence, if we hypothesize that increased food causes increased obesity then that means if we see no obesity then that implies no increase in food. Thus only three countries defied our hypothesis and they were Iran, Rwanda, and South Africa where obtaining accurate data is difficult.
The five countries that had a decrease in food but an increase in body weight do not dispute our hypothesis. They just show that increased food is not necessary, which we know is true. Decreased activity could also lead to increased weight and it is possible that this played a role in these countries and the 11 others where food was not sufficient to explain all of the weight increase.
I was already pretty convinced that food was the main driver of the obesity epidemic and this result puts it to rest for me. This is the main reason that I don't believe that the obesity epidemic is a health problem per se. It is a social and economic problem.
