The Nutrition Transition and Diet-Related Policy

The "nutrition transition," a concept developed by the researcher Barry Popkin in the 1990s, describes the shift in dietary patterns and body composition that accompanies economic development and urbanization: societies move from traditional diets high in fiber and complex carbohydrates toward diets higher in refined sugars, saturated fats, and animal products, alongside declining physical activity. This transition, once assumed to be a gradual byproduct of rising incomes, has occurred far faster in low- and middle-income countries than the equivalent shifts experienced by industrialized nations across the twentieth century, helping explain the rapid rise of obesity and diet-related noncommunicable diseases in countries still simultaneously grappling with undernutrition, as part of the double burden of malnutrition described earlier in this module.