Not the End of the World: How We Can Be the First Generation to Build a Sustainable Planet

by Hannah Ritchie

The obvious answer is global inequality. Hundreds of millions don’t get enough to eat, but billions get too much. Around four in 10 adults in the world are overweight. For most of human history the biggest battle was to get enough food to eat. Now, the hungry are a minority. The fact that obesity rates have increased so quickly across the world is actually a signal of how new and rare this situation is: evolving in a world of scarcity, we’ve been programmed to make the most of any food we can get our hands on. So, yes, part of the answer is that globally we eat more than we need. Still, we’re not eating 5,000 calories per day. We’re probably eating around half of that. The bigger question is how we can possibly lose half of the food we produce before it even reaches our plates.