Obesity Rates Surging In Developing Countries, Especially Egypt
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6AI52020101119Gotta love this part--the Egyptian government financed the use of trans fats among the public. Priceless!
Egypt's government subsidized a lot of trans fats and subsequently saw increases in obesity within poor populations.
Let us hope more progressive, enlightened Islamic nations follow Egypt's lead! And, let us hope that legions of fat Egyptian (and other Arab) cows will croak of heart attacks and strokes before they spawn more baby demons.
DBF
Obesity weighs on the wealthy in poor countries
By Lynne Peeples
NEW YORK | Fri Nov 19, 2010 4:24pm EST
(Reuters Health) - The obesity epidemic has taken hold in many developing countries, new research finds, with the burden weighing almost entirely on the nations' wealthy.
Meanwhile, poor people within the same borders still can't put on enough pounds.
The findings contrast the pattern in developed nations, such as the U.S., where obesity tends to have a heavier impact on the poor.
"There's a lot of discussion on how the problems of obesity and overweight are now spreading to poor and developing countries," lead researcher SV Subramanian of the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston, told Reuters Health.
But the data to back up this assertion have been lacking, and the question of who is most affected within those countries is almost never asked, he added.
In the new study, Subramanian and his colleagues looked for trends in the weights of more than half a million women across 54 developing countries between 1994 and 2008.
Overall, they found that about a quarter of the women were overweight, with the rate varying widely between countries -- from three out of every four women in Egypt to just 6 percent in Ethiopia.
More importantly, said Subramanian, was what his team found when they looked within each country: As levels of income and education rose, so did individuals' weight.
People ranked in the top quarter of the population based on wealth, for example, had more than double the risk of being overweight compared to individuals in the bottom quarter, report the researchers in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Meanwhile, a substantial portion of the population -- often more than the number overweight or obese -- still suffered from being underweight.
"On the one hand, you have populations where there is a need to increase calorie intake, and on the other, you have the rich folks who are over-consuming," noted Subramanian.
An explanation for this paired pattern is not completely clear. Food is cheap and convenient for well-to-do populations, he explained. Their neighborhoods typically house a lot of restaurants where people can easily consume a lot without expending energy to cook.
He also noted that cultural phenomena may be driving some of these patterns. A marriage-aged girl may be expected to look healthy as opposed to anorexic.
"I think the fact that these two problems are happening in distinctly separate groups offers a very unique opportunity to actually do something," Subramanian said. "The challenge is finding the balance."
For the overweight, he suggested that interventions through education and the media might do the trick. Some evidence suggests that such campaigns may be responsible for eventually inverting the relationship of wealth and weight in rich countries.
But simply providing more calories may not be the answer for the poor, noting that Egypt's government subsidized a lot of trans fats and subsequently saw increases in obesity within poor populations. They also saw continued problems with underweight among those still too poor to buy the cheap food.
"We should have a more comprehensive policy that focuses incentives on the right compositions of nutrients," he added. "That way we can solve the problem of underweight, while also controlling the problem of overweight."
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