Superior native focuses on the world's health

Jan. 9—CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — A Superior native is working to change how the world eats and drinks to improve health.

Barry Popkin, a W.R. Kenan Jr. distinguished professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was born in Superior in 1944.

"I graduated from Central when it was still a high school," Popkin said. "I even worked at the Evening Telegram as a part-time sportswriter way back in the old days when there was the Superior Blues and it was a whole different world."

Popkin said he worked part time in the summer and weekends and nights between 1959 and 1962 for the Telegram.

Growing up in Superior, Popkin said his father drove truck for, and then ran a furniture store started by his grandfather with his uncle, Ben Marcovich, at the end of Tower Avenue, Popkin Furniture. His father was the head of the Masonic Lodge one year, he said.

"Superior's in my blood," Popkin said. "It's part of what made me."

But it was a scholarship to attend the University of Wisconsin in Madison as the second in his graduating class that really started to shape the world Popkin lives in now.

"That's where I explored many different approaches and ideas like economics and decided to major in it," Popkin said. Then in his senior year at the university, he said the government provided a special scholarship to go to India before he graduated and went on to the graduate world to earn advanced degrees in economics.

The transition from economics to public health was made because Popkin said he wanted to make a real impact on the world. He focused his senior thesis on economics and nutrition back in 1966.

At the time, Popkin said, he went to work in the Philippines through a foundation at a university for three years.

"Economics is more theory stuff, and it's not as much of a field ... you are more theoretical than practical," Popkin said. "I wanted to be involved in more real-world issues and public health did that."

Working in public health, Popkin said he's had the opportunity to work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Food and Drug Administration as well as international organizations like the World Bank, the World Health Organization and health and finance ministries in many countries.

"What's unique about my career is I worked on hunger and malnutrition in the beginning ... but later started seeing people under economic reform starting to get heavy," Popkin said.

Working with low- and middle-income countries, Popkin said the changes were happening globally. He said he started seeing a lot more diet and food changes than one would have expected.

Countries like Iran, Mexico, Chile, India and China were a lot more overweight than they expected, Popkin said. He said he persuaded the World Health Organization to publish a series of papers on the changes in diet and activity levels that were contributing to middle-income countries becoming overweight.

"I created a concept called the 'nutrition transition,' which spoke to our changes over the decades in how we eat, drink and move, and that led me to also talk about obesity growing in low- and middle-income countries," Popkin said.

Efforts to turn people away from unhealthy diets have included taxes on sugary beverages, putting warning labels on unhealthy foods, addressing the marketing of unhealthy foods and encouraging schools to offer healthy foods.

"These are usually a battle," Popkin said. "The food industry, even though they don't lose employment — they could make healthy food or unhealthy."

Popkin said wealthier countries like the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom are more challenging because of the politics involved before something is adopted, but they are working on it.

"We're kind of the world leader to do this thing to get rid of unhealthy, ultra-processed food ... and replace it with healthier eating," Popkin said. "We're really seeing large changes in Mexico where we first got rid of sugary beverages, among other things."

After evaluating the impact of policy changes in Mexico, Popkin said 40 other countries implemented a tax on sugary beverages within two years. Publishing the result of warning labels on unhealthy food in Chile led to 12 other countries, including Canada and Israel, adopting warning labels.

"I have a desire to want to help people and help society," Popkin said. "And my skill is best to work at a national level. Other people work in communities. And I've just been lucky with my economics, combined with my nutrition, to be able to support at an international level."