Obesity is rising almost everywhere, spurring a rise in chronic disease

This shows MyThali (My Plate), a new campaign of Arogya World to show urban Indian women a healthy diet in order to fight obesity and associated non-communicable diseases. Photo: Arogya World

This was originally published on Global Health TV on April 27, 2018.

The picture above shows the ideal, healthy plate of food for an urban adult woman in India – one cup of vegetable, one cup of rice, one and a half pieces of chapatti, one cup of protein (meat, lentil or sambar) and a half cup of yogurt. 

But too often this is not the typical meal of an Indian. Some people eat too much and become overweight or obese, particularly in urban areas. Obesity increases people’s likelihood of developing diabetes, to which Indians are predisposed. Meanwhile, some people, particularly rural adolescent girls, eat too little putting themselves at risk when they become pregnant at an early age.

So Arogya World, a U.S.-based organization committed to changing the course of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) in India, created MyThali (“My Plate”), inspired by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s “My Plate” campaign and using the guidelines from India’s National Institute of Nutrition to encourage them to make healthier choices. Arogya World is aggressively implementing this campaign in workplaces across India.

In advancing food security at G20, civil society can learn from business

NOTE: This was originally published on the Impatient Optimists of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation on June 20, 2012.
 
LOS CABOS, Mexico — One of the remarkable developments of this G20 Summit is the meteoric rise of the B20 (Business-20) and its championing of an issue that is also a priority for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) — food security and nutrition.

The B20 describes itself as “an international forum aimed at fostering dialogue between G20 governments and the global business community,” with a main objective of providing heads of state with meaningful recommendations from business.

Food security and nutrition might not have achieved the prominence they have at this summit if not for the B20. And they have achieved prominence—if not many concrete results — as evidenced by Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s op-ed in the Financial Times Monday entitled “Why food security comes first:”

We will have failed if we manage to get the richest nations back on track while the poorest still experience famine. That is why my country insisted on placing food security at the top of the G20 agenda, alongside the restoration of economic growth and global financial reform.

What NGOs want from the Mexico G20 on food security and nutrition

NGOs holding one of our two press conferences at the G20 at Los Cabos.

NOTE: This was originally published on the Huffington Post on June 18, 2012.
 
LOS CABOS, Mexico -- On the eve of the G20 Summit, which opens here on June 18, I've been looking into what nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) want to get out of the G20 Mexico on an issue that is a priority to NGOs as well as the Mexican presidency of the G20 -- "enhancing food security and addressing commodity price volatility," in the words of the Mexican government.

And I discovered that the biggest NGOs and NGO coalitions here in Los Cabos are advocating for many of the same food security and nutrition issues, but also have some differences.

In its paper titled Food Security: A G20 Priority, the Mexican government defines food security "not only as an increase in production, but also the availability of, and access to, food by the population."

In a sense, that is one of the highest priorities of NGOs advocating on this issue at Los Cabos -- to ensure that the G20 not only takes steps to increase food production but also to make sure that the most vulnerable, especially women and children, have access to it.