As someone concerned with poverty reduction, I expected this headline to be good news: “Overweight now outnumber under-fed around the world.”

Instead, we learn that massive government intervention is needed:

To combat this, governments need to adjust domestic policy to allow control over the price of food which could then in turn impact on people’s diets, the annual conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists has been told…

As the “burden of obesity” shifted from the rich to the poor, Professor Popkin suggested that governments should design economic strategies to influence the national diet.

However, he said, such policies used to control people’s diets would need to be carefully examined.

“A central issue affecting the world’s public health is the need to shift the relative prices of a range of foods to encourage healthier, less energy-dense and more nutrient-dense foods.

I imagine that there will be numerous unintended consequences of extensive, diet-conscious price controls on food.