Around the world, our diets have been shifting since the surge in processed foods and beverages with high sugar and highly refined carbohydrate contents. Foods and drinks lacking adequate nutrition, combined with a more sedentary lifestyle, has become the perfect recipe for a global health crisis. Dr. Barry Popkin, of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-CH), hopes to use his understanding of the nutrition transition and related global obesity epidemic, and his work in helping governments create regulatory initiatives such as taxing unhealthy foods and beverages and controlling their marketing and labeling to offset many adverse food system changes and reduce obesity significantly. By combining his understanding of food systems with his economics and nutrition background, Dr. Popkin's work spans four decades of finding solutions with incredible impact in both the U.S. and internationallyon the prevention of obesity and other chronic diseases related to these dietary and obesity shifts. In the U.S., he helps to evaluate current programs and make recommendations for healthier choices and has worked with many government and nonprofit groups to design taxes and other initiatives. In low and middle income countries, he studies dynamic changes that affect people's health and each country's economy and helps to educate public officials and citizens by organizing meetings. When combined, Dr. Popkin has begun to work with many countries to design that are now  implementing regulations from marketing controls to taxation, to changes in claims and labeling laws that will address the changes of our modern food system and diet. While this type of implementation can be easier in low to limited income countries, he hopes the actions of other countries will provide feedback to inform others, including the U.S. He is  actively working with leaders in 6-8 countries to implement changes similar to the changes he initiated in Mexico.

In addition to his revolutionary work with food justice and policy, Dr. Popkin manages the only global team that has the skills to study the food system from the factory all the way to individual diet and ultimately health. He is the global leader in working with countries on sugary beverage and junk food taxes and continues to be the warning beacon of major dynamics of the food system that few others fully understand or study. Furthermore, he is at the forefront of working with low and middle income countries on taxation, media marketing regulations, front of the label profiling to identify healthy foods, and many other initiatives to regulate the food industry and promote healthier eating, while being a very rigorous scientist with strong integrity. Dr. Popkin passionately explains, "for me, it is the most exciting time in my life," because he feels he is coming closer to changing diet and the world food system in new ways. Yet funding for rigorous evaluation of these efforts is lacking in the current economic climate.

Current research includes: 

• U.S. Policy Related Food System Research: Dr. Popkin works closely with U.S. policy makers and cities to help design systems that will impact how people eat, drink, and move. Most recently, he has created almost all the pieces of a system that allows us to monitor from factory to fork the changes global and local food companies make in the packaged food products Americans buy, and link this annually to changes in actual dietary intake. This revolutionary surveillance system allows us to understand the exact way food companies impact children and adults in a manner our government misses by incorporating constantly changing food products and food formulations. Dr. Popkin hopes to use donations to evaluate an existing gap year in this study that would show proof of concept of how these changes in added sugar, sodium, saturated fat and foods affect children or adult diets. Over the past decade this has involved categorizing and studying the content of over 1.2 million unique foods and their ingredients Americans have purchased and what it means for our diets and ultimately our health. In the past, he wrote the amicus brief for the Bloomberg Administration on restaurant labeling, has advised various states and cities, and often does so free of charge as a public service. Currently he is using this system to evaluate the Berkeley beverage tax and is working with groups nationally to plan and later evaluate any other sugary beverage or junk food taxes communities implement while also studying what retailers and food manufacturers are doing and how they are positively or adversely affecting our diets. 

• Lower and Middle Income Countries: Dr. Popkin's research and leadership has helped several low and middle income countries to begin to implement regulations on package labeling, marketing controls, taxation, and other regulations that will change the food system and promote healthier lifestyles in addition to conducting research to evaluate and prove that impact. Recently, Dr. Popkin lead several national committees in Mexico for their FDA and Ministries of Health/Finance, and is a major influence in guiding the evaluation of the impact of Mexico's taxes on sugary beverages and junk food on diet and health. Dr. Popkin is working with Colombia, Ecuador, Thailand, and four other Asian countries to begin similar major regulatory shifts with taxation and marketing controls as major components. He received initial funding to begin to show the positive impact of the Mexican taxes but funds are needed to prove the health effect there and to undertake either less costly evaluations of food purchase changes or more costly health impact evaluations in the other countries. This is essential to learn what works and to inspire other low and middle income countries to initiate such programs, which will ultimately impact what high income countries like the U.S. initiate as well.