Reflexiones sobre las nuevas formas del hambre en el siglo XXI: la obesidad de la escasez

This paper is not an original research but my critical thought based on my work and secondary data. We will discuss the global epidemic of obesity, one of the most studied medical phenomena in our time. I maintain that, rather than a problem of plenty (because today there is enough availabili-ty food to feed every inhabitant on the planet) obesity is a problem of scarcity. I say this because, in Latin American societies and among other pathologies of poverty, there is an overlap of food patterns and the poo-rest people face all the problems of under nourishment at the same time as all the problems of overweight. Different problems I could be expe-rienced in the same family and in the same person along her life Cycle. I will develop the idea that obesity is not an individual problem that we can solve within the medical system but a social one. It originates in the change of relationships that the societies have been undergoing in the agri-industrial global market. Obesity mainly affects the poorest sector of the population and its permanent increase finds its cause in its functiona-lity to the present social system. To struggle against obesity, before de-veloping health care policies we need to change the structural concept (logic) of market society, looking for a care logic (the care of the people and the environment), silenced in our society in these days.