Barry M. Popkin

About

Barry M. Popkin, PhD, is the W. R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of nutrition at the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. He holds a doctorate in agricultural economics from Cornell University. He established the Division of Nutrition Epidemiology at UNC and later founded and led the UNC Interdisciplinary Obesity Center, funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). His research program focuses on understanding the stages of the Nutrition Transition, which involves the dynamic shifts in dietary intake and physical activity patterns related to obesity and other nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases (NCD). His work spans globally, including in the U.S. and low- and middle-income countries, with an emphasis on evaluating programs and policies aimed at improving population health during transitional phases. Popkin has played a central role in bringing global attention to obesity, its determinants, and consequences, and is actively involved in policy evaluation, including research on sugar-sweetened beverage taxes in countries such as Mexico, Chile, South Africa, and Brazil. He has contributed significantly to international initiatives on food, hunger, and obesity, and has been recognized with numerous awards for his global contributions to public health and nutrition.

Research topics

• Environmental health
• Medicine
• Computer Science
• Business
• Food science
• Geography
• Biology
• Biotechnology
• Information Retrieval
• Internal medicine

Selected publications

• Worldwide trends in underweight and obesity from 1990 to 2022: a pooled analysis of 3663 population-representative studies with 222 million children, adolescents, and adults

  The Lancet · 2024 · 1863 citations

  BACKGROUND: Underweight and obesity are associated with adverse health outcomes throughout the life course. We estimated the individual and combined prevalence of underweight or thinness and obesity, and their changes, from 1990 to 2022 for adults and school-aged children and adolescents in 200 countries and territories. METHODS: ). For school-aged children and adolescents, we report thinness (BMI <2 SD below the median of the WHO growth reference) and obesity (BMI >2 SD above the median). FINDI…

  DOI

• Individuals with obesity and COVID‐19: A global perspective on the epidemiology and biological relationships

  Obesity Reviews · 2020 · 1176 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The linkage of individuals with obesity and COVID-19 is controversial and lacks systematic reviews. After a systematic search of the Chinese and English language literature on COVID-19, 75 studies were used to conduct a series of meta-analyses on the relationship of individuals with obesity-COVID-19 over the full spectrum from risk to mortality. A systematic review of the mechanistic pathways for COVID-19 and individuals with obesity is presented. Pooled analysis show individuals with obesity we…

  DOI

• The nutrition transition to a stage of high obesity and noncommunicable disease prevalence dominated by ultra‐processed foods is not inevitable

  Obesity Reviews · 2021 · 549 citations

  1st authorCorresponding

  The Nutrition Transition model is presented with the nature and pace of change in key stages varying by location and subpopulations. At present, all high-income and many low- and middle-income countries are in a stage of the transition where nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases including obesity, type 2 diabetes, and hypertension are dominating adult morbidity and mortality and are very high or growing rapidly in prevalence. Some countries still have key subpopulations facing hunger and un…

  DOI

• An evaluation of Chile’s Law of Food Labeling and Advertising on sugar-sweetened beverage purchases from 2015 to 2017: A before-and-after study

  PLoS Medicine · 2020 · 485 citations

  BACKGROUND: Chile's Law of Food Labeling and Advertising, implemented in 2016, was the first national regulation to jointly mandate front-of-package warning labels, restrict child-directed marketing, and ban sales in schools of all foods and beverages containing added sugars, sodium, or saturated fats that exceed set nutrient or calorie thresholds. The objective of this study is to evaluate the impact of this package of policies on household beverage purchases. METHOD AND FINDINGS: In this obser…

  DOI

• Towards unified and impactful policies to reduce ultra-processed food consumption and promote healthier eating

  The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology · 2021 · 324 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  DOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01HD039183

  NIH · $780k · 2005

• NIH Grant D43TW009077

  NIH · $1.1M · 2018

• NIH Grant R01HD019983

  NIH · $1.1M · 1993

Frequent coauthors

• Penny Gordon‐Larsen

  198 shared

• Linda S. Adair

  University of North Carolina Health Care

  146 shared

• Kiyah J. Duffey

  142 shared

• Shu Wen Ng

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  122 shared

• Michelle A. Méndez

  Western Sydney University

  96 shared

• Walter C. Willett

  Brigham and Women's Hospital

  96 shared

• Shufa Du

  91 shared

• David R. Jacobs

  University of Minnesota

  89 shared

Awards & honors

• David Kritchevsky Memorial Lecture 2018
• Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Council of the American…
• UNC-CH Population Science and Public Health Award (2017)
• World Obesity Federation Conrad A. Elvehjem Award for Public…
• American Society of Nutrition Gopalan Oration Award (2015)

Similar researchers at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Cynthia Bulikh-134
• Nobuyo Maedah-97