Activist fears U.S. is exporting its weight problem to poor countries

In 2010, when the world’s population stood at nearly 7
billion people, about 1 billion people were hungry and 1 billion overweight or
obese.

“How crazy ironic is that?” activist, author and
entrepreneur Ellen Gustafson asked an audience of business students at the
University of Notre Dame.

A one-time reporter on terrorism issues for ABC News, Gustafson
said she changed careers after discovering that terrorist hotbeds tended to be
in places that suffered from chronic hunger. She co-founded a successful
business that sold fashionable bags for women, the proceeds from which paid for
food aid for starving children around the world.

In her talk at Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business on
March 22, 2013, however, the young entrepreneur described why she has changed
her thinking. Instead of raising money to feed the hungry through shipments of
U.S. grain, she is now raising the alarm about the perils of MAD – “the Modern
American Diet” – spreading throughout the world.

Gustafson is the founder and executive director of the 30 Project, an organization aimed at
connecting global hunger and obesity while promoting ideas for food-system
improvements. According to the organization’s website, the name comes from
changes in the global food system that began about 30 years ago, 1980, precipitated
by the consolidation of U.S. agriculture, a decrease in U.S. aid to farmers abroad,
and the creation of new and cheap processed foods like high-fructose corn syrup.

Gustafson said much of the blame for people being overweight
in the United States can be traced to a diet heavy on processed foods that are
rich in high-fructose corn syrup and poor in fresh fruits and vegetables. As
poorer countries have developed economically and the prevailing U.S. diet has
spread around the globe, she said, the same health problems have followed.

“It’s obviously the diet, it’s the way we’re producing food,
it’s the way we are eating,” she said. “I would say this is the issue for our
generation: understanding how to end hunger … and not turn people who are
hungry directly into people who are overweight.”

Gustafson said well-intentioned efforts such as U.S. food
aid shipments typically consist of sacks of U.S. corn. A better idea, she said,
would be to pay local farmers in impoverished countries to produce fruits and
vegetables. But such a policy would upset the U.S. farm lobby because the
government buys enormous amounts of U.S. grain for food aid shipments, she
said.

Gustafson said that over time, too much emphasis has been
placed on improving corn yields, which has made processed foods cheaper. Her
presentation included a slide showing that in the past 30 years the prices of soft
drinks and other junk foods have actually decreased, while prices for fresh
fruits and vegetables have more than doubled.

“The least healthful foods have rapidly become wildly less
expensive than the most healthful foods. So, clearly, being rational consumers,
we’re all going after the cheapest, easiest thing to buy,” she said.

Gustafson said one way to bring about change is for people
to make different buying and eating choices. She’s heartened by certain trends,
she said. Sales of organic produce are up 20 percent since 1990, and local food
sales in the United States have grown from $4 billion in 2002 to $11 billion in
2011, she said.

Gustafson’s talk was part of the Mendoza College’s The Ten
Years Hence speaker series, which explores issues, ideas and trends likely to
affect business and society over the next decade.

The series is sponsored by the O’Brien-Smith Leadership
Program, made possible by a generous endowment from William H. O’Brien (ND ’40)
and his wife, Dee. The O’Brien-Smith Program endowment provides an opportunity
for students and faculty to interact with distinguished leaders from business,
government and nonprofit sectors.

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