Obesity is 'collateral damage in the battle for modernity'. It's an unintended but unavoidable consequence of economic progress.Obesity is not a disease but a signal. It's the canary in the coalmine, which should alert us to bigger structural problems in society.There are a number of areas where humans have achieved a peak of success, a sweet spot, but now that very success is turning on us and threatening to unravel centuries of achievement. On the one hand, economic growt...

Explores how affluence and the development of new technologies has come at a huge, and potentially devastating, cost - an epidemic of obesity and a world clogged by waste. Obesity is 'collateral damage in the battle for modernity'. It's an unintended but unavoidable consequence of economic progress. Obesity is not a disease but a signal. It's the canary in the coalmine, which should alert us to bigger structural problems in society. There are a number of areas where humans have achieved a ...