Guest Information
Prof. Barry Popkin, PhD
Prof. Barry Popkin is the W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of Nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a nutrition and obesity researcher at the Carolina Population Center and is the director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Obesity at UNC.
He developed the concept of the Nutrition Transition, the study of the dynamic shifts in dietary intake and physical activity patterns and trends around obesity and other nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases (NCD). Prof. Popkin is involved now in work on program and policy design at the national level to improve the average diet at the population level.
He has published more than 545 journal articles, and is one of the most cited nutrition scholars in the world, with more than 90,000 citations.
In this episode we discuss:
- The "Nutrition Transition"
- Economic factors, lifestyle changes, and biopsychosocial forces
- How socioeconomic and cultural influences contribute to lifestyle changes
- Health and economic impacts of nutrition transition
- The increasing control of the food supply by large corporations
- Implications for policy
- Do taxation policies work? What are more/less effective types of taxation policies
- Food labelling policy
- Food marketing regulation
- Reformulation & public health
Links & Resources
- Popkin, 2021 - Measuring the nutrition transition and its dynamics
- Popkin & Hawkes, 2016 - Sweetening of the global diet, particularly beverages: patterns, trends, and policy responses
- Meyer et al., 2014 - Sociodemographic differences in fast food price sensitivity
- Popkin et al., 2012 - Global nutrition transition and the pandemic of obesity in developing countries
- Brownell et al., 2009 - The public health and economic benefits of taxing sugar-sweetened beverages
- Popkin et al., 2020 - Individuals with obesity and COVID-19: A global perspective on the epidemiology and biological relationships
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