How Were Eating Ourselves and the Planet to Death. There are a number of areas where humans have achieved a peak of success, but now that very success is turning on us and threatening to unravel centuries of achievement. On the one hand, economic growth has led to a steadily improving standard of living, better levels of health and ever increasing life spans. On the other hand this very affluence is the reason that both our bodies and the planet have gone into a downward spiral, manifested by an ever growing epidemic of obesity, and in a world clogged by waste. A fundamental change in thinking is needed both for how we treat our bodies