Nutrition professor fights against unhealthy habits

A bike brought Barry Popkin to Chapel Hill in 1977.

He had just returned to the U.S. after three years of public health research among 4 million people in Manila, Philippines. He was doing some extraordinary work, but he couldn’t ride his bike in the crowded metropolis.

Prominent American universities offered him jobs, many in large cities where traffic made cycling difficult and dangerous.

He was not interested.

But when Carolina’s offer arrived, Popkin took the job, ready to help build a nutrition research program and to ride uncongested roads.

Popkin, W.R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of nutrition at UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, continues groundbreaking research on how social change, diet and physical activity shape human health. Sometimes living in countries where he worked, Popkin has influenced global research methods, mentored 66 Carolina doctoral students who became scientists and published hundreds of papers. His work has shaped policies worldwide that help babies survive and people live longer, healthier lives.

Over more than five decades, Popkin has expanded the reach of his ideas. He was the first scholar to identify the global shift from traditional diets and active lifestyles to ones shaped by sugary drinks, processed foods and sedentary living.

He called the phenomenon the Nutrition Transition.

Today the concept is foundational in global public health research. Scholars use it to explain why countries once struggling primarily with hunger now face epidemics of obesity, diabetes and heart disease. At international conferences, young researchers sometimes treat Popkin like a rock star, asking for photos, autographs or a moment with him.

Early life

He grew up in small-town Superior, Wisconsin, often one of America’s wintriest places.

A self-described “normal kid,” he also calls himself “the ignored middle child and the mischievous one.” That mischievous streak occasionally got him into trouble, like the time he commandeered a tractor at a construction site simply to drive around the site.

As a teenager, he worked constantly. He mowed yards, shoveled snow and delivered newspapers. “I earned a hunk of money for college,” Popkin said.

In high school he was a weekend sportswriter for the Superior Evening Telegram. He also managed his school’s basketball, football and baseball teams and organized a Little League program where he often was groundskeeper, scorekeeper or umpire.

Shift to public health nutrition

In 1964, after his junior year at the University of Wisconsin, Popkin was one of 20 American students selected to spend a year studying in India. He was interested in economics but instead undertook a research project studying the government’s failed relocation of families from a massive squatter settlement in Old Delhi to apartment complexes.

Popkin conducted household interviews and documented how the relocations ignored deeply rooted cultural patterns such as extended families sharing space, outdoor cooking and neighborhood connections.

The experience exposed him to extreme poverty and showed how economic policy, culture and health intersect.

Travel through Southeast Asia and Japan afterward deepened Popkin’s interest in international development. During his graduate school days, Popkin shifted from economics toward the emerging field of public health nutrition.

Popkin turned 82 in May and plans to transition to part-time status in 2027. He will have more time for competitive bridge and cycling the quiet roads that drew him to Carolina half a century ago.

“I grew up believing in service and doing the public good and, luckily, it’s worked out,” Popkin said.