Three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet | Hacker News Reader

Three billion people cannot afford a healthy diet

ourworldindata.org

53 pointstchalla48 comments

Is it possible to fix this? I am from a poor eastern European country and I'm donating to orphanages and animal shelters.

By western standards they need very little money. You can spend $5 on a coffee or on feeding a child for 2 days or clothing them for months.

Or on keeping several dogs fed for the same amount of time and under a roof. Of course, more is better.

The average donation to an orphanage in the country is $1.5 and I'm not sure how much they manage to get in a month.

Transferring money is not a problem, it's organization. But to even try and change anything one would have to go through the government, which seems completely uninterested in it. Hell, they won't even buy new buses around the capital. But politicians get new Skodas and Mercs.

Big charity organizations are randomly delivering a bunch of food or clothing every few months. Which is great, but it's not a regular, nor that much of a supply.

Direct crowdfunding from richer regions would work much better, but again, how to organize it? I guess that's why charities spend so much on just operating, it's harder than it seems.

Yet all the gig economy companies show that it may be possible to leverage modern IT technology for it.

Sir Peter Scott, Founder, WWF (1909-1989)

“You know, I have often thought that at the end of the day, we would have saved more wildlife if we had spent all WWF's money on buying condoms.”

We'll do more for the planet and for humanity by making female access to education, contraception, and abortion universal.

Either that, or Gaia will control the population, and it won't be pleasant.

population is less of an issue than extreme wealth gap that allows some guys to see the world burning from above Karman line.

but yeah we already have massive crop failures in switzerland.

This is the truth nobody will really talk about. Climate change is rooted in the size of the global human population more than anything else. Reducing our emissions buys us a bit of time, but it's just kicking the can down the road; as long as the global population continues to increase, we'll always catch up with it again.

Earth can only support a certain number of human beings.

>Earth can only support a certain number of human beings.

Correction. Earth can only support a certain number of human beings at a given standard of life.

I have seen HN comments where some users have said that earths capacity is closer to 100 billion than 10 billion but they always ignore that the standard of living would have to be pretty terrible.

> Earth can only support a certain number of human beings at a given standard of life.

Correction, to be pedantic. Earth can only support a certain number of human beings at a given standard of life with our current sciencific advancement. The number increases with advancements in renewable tech.

This. And it is much more effective to lower the birth rate in the industialized countries than in the poor, because of the hugh difference in resource consumption. Instead, the industialized societies are so much concerned about a decline in population that they try to mitigate it, instead of encouraging it.

Assuming that the rate of occurrence of talents is constant, less population means less intellectual / scientific / technological capacity, too. This may end in a decline in military might, and eventually erosion of political independence.

"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. This is as true of humans in the finite space of a planetary ecosystem as it is of gas molecules in a sealed flash. The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive." - Pardot Kynes, First Planetologist of Arrakis

I have an observation to share: Many countries where almost no one can afford a healthy diet according to this sites also have high population growth rates. For example, almost 96% of all people in Congo don't have enough money for healthy food, but the yearly growth rate is 3% or so.

Do you think this is correlated? And if so, isn't this then a vicious cycle?

EDIT: I'd really love to see an open discussion on this topic without a flame war or anything.

A different definition of health. Darwin would certainly call thier diet healthy enough. Any expanding population is at an evolutionary level more sucessfull than a stagnant population. Life expectancy, our modern concpet of health, is a very different story.

> For example, almost 96% of all people in Congo don't have enough money for healthy food

Does that... matter? How much do they rely on money to get food? Sub-Saharan Africa historically was a place where one woman working alone could support a household through horticulture.

"Income" in the calculation doesn't refer to just money. The author explicitly points out that food grown by subsistence farmers is included.

Most countries with very high pop growth are coming out of more or less preindustrial conditions - subsistence farming, children needed to feed the parents in age, lack of access to contraception, just getting better medical care to do recent child deaths, etc.

Population Growth is highly correlated to girl's age at time of marriage, education and Infant Mortality rate. These factors are mostly worse in poor countries.

I have the feeling (based on my own observations, so take it with a grain of salt) that education level affects both birth control and healthy diet. Even in first world countries.

It's a vicious cycle, but historically what we've seen is that drops in birth rate follows economic growth, not vice versa.

Poor economic conditions tends to mean parents rely on children for both work and for care in old age, and also correlates to lack of access to education on family planning as well as lack of access to contraceptives.

There are arguments to be made about precise cause and effect, but this pattern has been known for a long time; pretty much every developed country went through it, and almost all developing countries are on their way through the same pattern (almost all have seen birth rates drop dramatically, to the point the world is heading towards dropping population numbers within the next century).

Yup. It's called demographic transition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

This is a great video explaining it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348

As far as I am aware, there isn't much of a consensus among nutritionists as to what constitutes a "healthy diet", other than that a lot of sugar really isn't it. The article seems to define the term based on regional norms, which seems weird to me. No doubt a lot of people are not getting much variety in their food, yet somehow I doubt 3B people would be considered "unhealthy" in that they are so deficient in some mineral or fat that they experience functional maladies.

There is a lot more concensus and knowledge (science based) than people think. The news isn't good at reporting it.

Dr. Michael Greger does a pretty good job at explaining things. He recently did a video on the scientific consensus for a healthy diet. https://nutritionfacts.org/video/the-scientific-consensus-on.... It's designed for the masses but based on the research. Explanations and access to the research are much more accessible now than 20 years ago.

Is there a transcript or summary available? I personally detest video as a source of information.

I'm not entirely sure if there is a summary of the video. The final gist is that a minimally processed plant based diet is the healthiest. This is the consensus and what the cohort studies repeatedly show. There are now doctors/scientists who can explain the biomechanics of it all, too.

Last time the consensus was that "blue" (vegetables, fish, rice, few red and white meats) diet countries have the best quality of life and expected lifespan. If there really has been a major shift in this insight towards "plant based, little processing" then that goes a little beyond "the news is not good at reporting it" and goes straight into "everyone needs to have missed this". That honestly doesn't seem likely.

I'm not sure what you mean by "blue" diet. Do you have a reference?

The closest thing I could find was the blue zones and the diet in these locations. A summary of which is at https://www.bluezones.com/recipes/food-guidelines/. Though, I don't think this is a consensus.

Were you pointing to something else?

That is what I meant

Michael Greger is a vegan and plant-based diet ideologue. That's the summary.

Greger does tell people to eat plant based. But, he does it by showing what the scientific research has to say. Is there someone who shows what the science has to say where the science says to eat differently?

I've recently looked at some details from the US NIH, looked at some details out of the CDC, and spoken with someone on their type 2 diabetes program their doctor put them on (to get rid of it). The gist from each of these places is to eat unprocessed mostly plant based. The WHO even classifies some processed meats as carcinogens.

Is someone showing the science of a healthy diet is in a different direction? I'm genuinely looking for a pointer.

>But, he does it by showing what the scientific research has to say

He's a textbook of example of what every diet ideologue does.

It's called cherry picking "research" that reaffirms his views - in a field which is barely scientific to begin with.

He didn't arrive at a plant-based diet from "first principles", such as trying to derive it from estimated average requirements for all the various vitamins and minerals, (accounting for bioavailability from various sources).

Because if you do that, you'd have fish, eggs and animal organs as top contenders in bioavailabilty and nutritional density (meaning you can hit most of your RDAs without eating metric ton of food)

He is a not a scientist, he vegan ideologue first and foremost, he even sounds like a Christian preacher in his videos.

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.

I'm not interested in dietary advice from anyone who's already made up his mind and is ideologically opposed to animal products.

Rice beans and nuts - OK not interesting food, but super healthy and cheap. Am I missing something here?

Here in the UK, it's often reported that the poor cannot afford "healthy" food (it never states what healthy food is) and instead they eat unhealthy food - one can only assume they mean stuff like McDonalds?. This never made sense to me, you can buy rice, potatoes, tins of beans, pasta for far less than a burger or a curry. There are YouTube channels dedicated to cooking meals using super-cheap ingredients.

Occasionally I'll just eat a bowl of porridge (with milk) when I can't be bothered cooking. Not only is this extremely cheap but also healthy. You can dried fruits and nuts if you're feeling adventurous. Peanut butter also works.

This whole "poor people can't afford healthy food but can afford unhealthy" needs to stop.

Agreed. Healthy food is not as expensive as everyone makes it out to be. Even if you just ate porridge everyday, and supplemented it with some veggies, fruits, and nuts you would be fine overall.

I found it odd especially that they include meat and dairy if the national guidelines include it, both of which are going to be relatively expensive many places.

For example, even the dietary guidelines in India [0] include meat despite a substantial portion of the population being vegetarian. This article thusly puts 71% of that population into the unhealthy category, even though many of them wouldn't eat meat even if they could afford to regularly.

[0] http://www.fao.org/nutrition/education/food-based-dietary-gu...

It's interesting that, if you sort the table view https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/share-healthy-diet-unaffo... by ascending share of the population that cannot afford a healthy diet, the five countries that come out ahead are:

Azerbaijan 0.00%

Uzbekistan 0.00%

Iceland 0.02%

Slovenia 0.02%

Switzerland 0.02%

I'm quite surprised to see Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan with both 0.00%. I wonder whether that's an artifact of their estimation process (maybe they didn't have precise information on the bottom end of the income distribution?) or whether there's something those countries are doing much better than everyone else.

This really matters in the womb until 2 years.

This is when you do brain damage.

It will be in all those 3 billion unless they have had access to supplements until 2 years.

You are talking bringing high IQ's down to average and average IQ's down to below average. Below average to disabled. This continues the cycle.

There's little reason to improving schools and giving them computers until you fix this.

I'd be curious how this number has changed over time. I'd suspect that (as a percentage of overall population) this number is the lowest it's ever been in human history. Still something to continue improving!

The other 3 billion can but would rather eat unhealthily.

The remaining 1.6 billion can but would rather not eat at all.

How on earth does the US have 3.25 million people who can't afford a calorie sufficient diet? If there's one thing you can get on the cheap in the US, it's calories.

Good thing they can afford great healthcare then.

eating healthy is cheaper in my experience

*healthful

>>Healthy diets are expensive

That's absolutely NOT true!

Have you tried to compare a mostly rice diet to something that has quite significant variety in it (especially if you need the volume of food that a plant-based diet requires)? It's very expensive.

Just because everyone thinks rice/corn/potato is the problem-solver...hint it's not.

The claim was that healthy diets are not expensive, when in reality they are. The fact that unhealthy diets are unhealthy is not in dispute.

>>On average, the healthier diet costs 69% more, but this estimate is greatly affected by food choices. For a family whose household income is exceeded by one-third of the population, this increased expenditure represents about 30% of total household income. This could be decreased to about 10% to 15% if a healthy diet is carefully designed.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47790404_The_cost_o...

"For a family whose household income is exceeded by one-third of the population", in other words "rich". Yes, it's only 30% household income in extra spending! And perhaps with a lot of effort it can be lowered to 10-15% extra spending. This is a lot, especially when you don't have such an enormous amount of leeway in money that you can just move somewhere else.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com