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Asia faces obesity and diabetes pandemic
The rapid modernisation of China and other Asian countries has produced an alarming spike in the rate of obesity and diabetes, which could undermine the region's economic and social stability, experts warned on Wednesday.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 September 7, 2006
Sydney: The rapid modernisation of China and other Asian countries has produced an alarming spike in the rate of obesity and diabetes, which could undermine the region's economic and social stability, experts warned on Wednesday.
Asia currently has around two-thirds of the world's diabetics, or around 90 million people with the disease, according to Paul Zimmet, the chairman of the International Obesity Task Force. The majority of those are type 2 diabetics.
Four out of five of the world's most diabetic populations are also in Asia India, China, Pakistan and Japan and the number of diabetics in Asia is set to reach 120 million by 2010, said Zimmet, citing World Health Organisation data.
By 2025, the number of Asians with diabetes could hit 198 million, he said.
Meanwhile, the rate of obesity among Asian children is increasing by about 1 per cent each year, roughly the same rate as in Australia, the United States and Britain, according to the task force's Asia-Pacific director, Tim Gill.
"It's a social and economic disaster," said Zimmet.
Rapid economic development and the shift from an active, agricultural lifestyle to a sedentary, urban lifestyle are the main factors to blame for Asia's burgeoning weight problem, both experts agree.
As their economies have grown, many Asian countries that were once agriculturally self-sufficient have begun importing high-fat, high-calorie foods that were never a major part of their traditional diets.
In China, for example, the per capita consumption of vegetable oil has increased from around 1 litre per year to up to 17 litres in the past two decades, Gill said.
Anti-fat bias affects women more
Global obesity pandemic combined with society's anti-fat bias is more damaging to women than to men, an expert warned on Wednesday.
"Being obese and female is as bad as it gets," Berit Heitmann, advisor to the Danish government, told a meeting of world obesity experts in Sydney.
Obese women are socially stigmatised more than their male counterparts, delegates at the 10th International Congress on Obesity heard.
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