Sullivan Links to a Stupid Equivalency

Sullivan, via someones book review, includes the following excerpt:

If you're like me, you grew up worrying about people starving in other countries. Your mom would tell you things like, "Eat your food. There are kids going hungry tonight." But hunger, as a global threat, is now dwarfed by overweight. According to Popkin, the population of obese and overweight people worldwide—1.6 billion—is now twice as large as the population of malnourished people.

Well that might be true in a literal sense, but it's ridiculous in a practical one. Comparing obese populations to malnourished ones overlooks the fact that malnourishment is comparatively much more problematic and detrimental. I'm not a nutritionist, but I'd wager that indicators such as life expectancy would be much shorter in malnourished verses obese populations. Not to mention that obesity often (though I realize not exclusively) stems from lifestyle choices. I don't think malnourished folks in rural Appalachia or Sub-Sahara Africa are sitting around, watching TV, deciding to forgo sustenance.