How important a factor is globalization?
Your title, a play on Thomas Friedman’s book on the global economy, “The World Is Flat,” suggests it’s a big factor, that we created the obesity crisis in America, then exported it. Well, let’s take an example. Up until three years ago, there was no snacking in China. Now it’s exploding. Why? Because all of a sudden, there are Chinese equivalents of Wal-Mart. A lot of people used to live in a subsistence world, a more primitive world, and they couldn’t afford things like modern vegetable oil. But now we have supermarkets everywhere, and everybody sees the same TV we see and wants the same things we want. Wasn’t it once the case that people in developing nations tended to get fat only when they moved to cities? It certainly was the case in the early phases. But now in China and Mexico, people in the rural areas are as fat or fatter than they are in the urban areas. That’s because all of a sudden food is cheap in rural areas, and farmers and fishermen who used to have very labor-intensiv
