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October 23, 2013

Reservations For 9 Billion, Please

“Imagine a world in which seafood is the world’s most-eaten protein.” In this excerpt from The Perfect Protein, published in the recent issue of Oceana magazine, Oceana CEO Andy Sharpless and Suzannah Evans explore how seafood is the key to feeding our growing world.

If the dawn of modern humanity was prompted by the availability of nourishing fat, then the twenty-first century may repeat that story, only this time through a fun-house mirror. An obesity epidemic looms today just as surely as hunger crises multiply.

Homo sapiens is the dominant species on Earth. We’ve colonized nearly every corner of our planet, creating pockets of incredible wealth as well as valleys of famine and despair. A common way to look at the world today is through the lens of the haves and the have nots. But let us suggest another way: Humanity in the twenty-first century may be divided between two groups that we can call the “fats” and the “thins.”

We have the technical ability to feed the world already, and quite fully. If you added up all the world’s food and divided by the number of people on Earth, each person would have 2,700 calories a day—plenty for survival. But, of course, famine still happens. Nearly a billion people on Earth are hungry, while another billion are overweight. Still another half billion are obese.

If we have the ability to feed everyone, why don’t we?

Continue reading at Oceana magazine