Un monde obese

By 2030, it is estimated that half of the planet will be obese or overweight, leading to an explosion of diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and certain cancers. How can we explain this global epidemic, which no country has yet managed to curb? While obesity carries its own set of cliches, from all-powerful genes to failing individual wills, and while industrialists and public authorities continue to point the finger at the lack of physical activity, could this scourge not be the result of a collective failure cooked up on our plates? At the end of the 1970s, the fight against fat, designated as responsible for cardiovascular diseases, made cereals, rich in carbohydrates and massively subsidized, the new basis of our diet.