A wide-ranging exhibit on the food challenges of the 21st century, including changing eating habits and alarming levels of obesity in the United States and beyond, opens at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History early next year.
Displays will include the neuroscience behind appetite and obesity and how the body stores food and energy. Behavioral choices in nutrition and exercise and the influence of social, environmental and cultural settings will also be examined. Visitors will investigate human origins as hunter-gatherers; explore societal pressures, such as the progressive growth of portion sizes; tackle media influences on food preferences; and consider the serious health consequences associated with obesity.
The exhibit, Big Food: Health, Culture and the Evolution of Eating, will conclude with a challenge for visitors to reflect on their role in personal and community health, environmental justice and the food system’s sustainability.
“We hope visitors will leave with an enhanced understanding of one of the most important transformations in health and the human experience in the past century,” said JeannetteR.Ickovics, Ph.D., professor and director of the Social and Behavioral Sciences program at the School of Public Health, director of the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE) and the exhibit’s lead curator. “Obesity is also one of the biggest health challenges now and in the future.”
According to the World Health Organization, more than one billion adults worldwide are now overweight, with at least 300 million of them classified as clinically obese. This dramatic increase has resulted in a greater number of life-threatening chronic diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and certain types of cancer.
“Historically, obesity has been viewed as a medical problem that needs treatment. With this exhibit, we hope to challenge that viewpoint and show how obesity is now a public health problem. The current epidemic results from systemic and profound changes to our food environment. Now, we need revolutionary improvements to our food system to help our population regain its health,” said Marlene B. Schwartz, Ph.D., deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy & Obesity at Yale.
Theexhibit is a collaboration between CARE, the Peabody Museum and the Rudd Center. It runs from Feb. 11 through Nov. 30.