Global/Regional Work | Global Food Research Program

The Global Food Research Program team collectively or individually has been involved in research spanning regions, countries at all income levels, and including studies on diet, physical activity, overweight/obesity, and broader food system-related issues. Policy work includes the forthcoming World Bank obesity strategy coauthored by Barry Popkin and Meera Shekar, regional studies on food systems and obesity by Popkin and Tom Reardon and others, background documents for initiatives on physical activity, and Bellagio meetings.

Reviews include a narrative review of statutory governmental regulations to restrict unhealthy food marketing to children, and a scoping review on front-of-package warning labels (forthcoming).

Other Global Work

Nutrition Transition Program

Barry Popkin developed the concept of the Nutrition Transition, the study of the dynamic shifts in dietary intake and physical activity patterns and trends and obesity and other nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases. Read more about the Nutrition Transition program here.

Front-of-package Labels in Asia

As Chairman of the Scientific Committee of Choices International, Barry Popkin has been working with a set of Asian countries to establish and attempt to harmonize their front-of-the-label profiling (FOP) of packaged processed foods. Read more about this project here.

Bellagio Meeting 2013

The Bellagio “Conference on Program and Policy Options for Preventing Obesity in the Low- and Middle-Income Countries” was organized to pull together the current knowledge on how countries are tackling at the large-scale regulatory level obesity prevention. Read more about this conference here.