Dr. Popkin was a panelist for the Forum’s discussion on Reforming the 2012 Farm Bill.
Barry Popkin is the W R Kenan, Jr Distinguished Professor in the Department of Nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, and Professor of Economics. He developed the Nutrition Transition concept (the study of the dynamic shifts in dietary intake and physical activity patterns and trends and obesity and other nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases). His research program focuses globally on understanding the shifts in stages of the transition and programs and policies to improve the population health linked with this transition. He is primarily funded by a large number of NIH R01’s, including long-term U.S. research on the economic and physical environment with CARDIA as the major cohort studied and the UNC Food Research Program (evaluating the impact of global food company changes in product formulation as it impacts the diets of Americans) and internationally (large-scale longitudinal surveys in China and Russia and national surveys in countries such as Brazil, Mexico, the United Arab Emirates, and India). He is involved in national and global policy formulation for many countries, particularly Mexico and China. He has published more than 340 refereed journal articles, is one of the most cited nutrition scholars globally (8,600 citations), and wrote the book The World is Fat: The Fads, Trends, Policies, and Products That Are Fattening the Human Race (January 2009, Avery-Penguin Publishers), translated into 9 languages. — Text from UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health
