UNC's Barry Popkin Shares His New Book, The World is Fat On UNC-TV’s North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, November 8, at 5 PM
Posted: 11-05-2009 : CHAPEL, HILL, N.C.

CHAPEL, HILL, N.C. -- Today, the planet's 1.3 billion overweight people by far outnumber the 700 million who are undernourished. This figure would have seemed ludicrous just fifty years ago, when hunger was the world's most pressing nutritional problem.

In The World Is Fat, Barry Popkin argues that the fattening of the human race is not simply about that next cheeseburger; rather, it is a result of an unprecedented collision of human biology with trends in technology, globalization, government policy, and the food industry that are changing how we eat and how we live.

In an all-new episode of UNC-TV’s local literary series North Carolina Bookwatch with D.G. Martin, premiering Sunday, November 1, at 5 PM, Barry Popkin discusses his timely and eye-opening look at the obesity epidemic.

Popkin, whose expertise in both nutrition and economics makes him uniquely qualified to write this book, compares our lifestyles today with those of half a century ago through the stories of five families living in the United States, Mexico, and India. He shows how increasing access to media and exposure to advertising, a powerful food industry, the rise of Wal-Mart like shopping centers, and a dramatic decline in physical activity are clashing with millions of years of human evolution, creating a world of overweight people with debilitating health problems such as diabetes. Ultimately, Popkin contends that widespread obesity is less a result of poor individual dietary choices than about a hi-tech, interconnected world in which governments and multinational corporations have extraordinary power to shape our everyday lives.

Barry Popkin is the Carla Smith Chamblee Distinguished Professor of Global Nutrition at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and director of the UNC Interdisciplinary Obesity Center. His U.S. research program focuses on understanding dietary and physical activity behaviors, the factors that cause them to change over time, and their health consequences. His global work includes a series of long-term studies in China, Russia, the Philippines, Brazil, and several other countries. Popkin’s research has been featured in hundreds of newspaper and magazine articles, in such publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Economist, Time, and Scientific American.

Don’t miss D.G. Martin’s all-new interview with Barry Popkin on North Carolina Bookwatch, Sunday, November 8, at 5 PM, only on UNC-TV!

During the 26-week season of North Carolina Bookwatch, guests will also include: John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed (Holy Smoke), Justin Catanoso (My Cousin the Saint), Todd Johnson (The Sweet By and By), Michael Walden (North Carolina in the Connected Age), Barbara Fredrickson (Positivity), Michael Davis (Street Gang), Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational), Howard Lee (The Courage to Lead), Marianne Gingher (Adventures in Pen Land), Dan Barefoot (Hark the Sound of Tar Heel Voices), John Hart (The Last Child), Elizabeth Edwards (Resilience), Brett Friedlander (Chasing Moonlight), Michael Malone (The Four Corners of the Sky), John Kessel (The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories), Reynolds Price (Ardent Spirits), and Alexandra Sokoloff (The Unseen).

For additional information about series guests and airdates, plus links to Bookwatch on Facebook, please visit: www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

Funding for North Carolina Bookwatch is provided by UNC-TV members and by Quail Ridge Books and Music, Raleigh’s independent, full service bookstore, bringing readers and writers together since 1984.

North Carolina Bookwatch is part of UNC-TV’s ongoing commitment to produce programs for and about North Carolina. UNC-TV is the statewide 11-station broadcast network of the University of North Carolina. For more information, please visit www.unctv.org/ncbookwatch.

For more information about North Carolina Bookwatch and UNC-TV’s other original productions, please visit our website at www.unctv.org.