Asian Obesity Levels Catch Up With West

Auburn, April 1, 2003 --- Until recently, obesity and its related problems were associated almost entirely with the West, where food was cheap, fast and fatty and physical inactivity was the norm rather than the exception.

But Asians are catching up fast. As health professionals are learning, the rising tide of affluence that has followed industrialization and urbanization throughout much of Asia has been accompanied by the same problems associated with the West – skyrocketing rates of obesity coupled with plummeting levels of physical activity.

Where malaria, typhoid and malnutrition once were the major killers, millions of people are falling prey to “Western” diseases – diabetes, heart disease and strokes, all associated with obesity and sedentary lifestyles.

This dramatic, almost abrupt change in lifestyle follows centuries in which the vast majority of Asians survived on a diet of less than 2,000 calories a day derived from food eked out of the soil through backbreaking subsistence farming.

“The number of calories consumed by Asians, historically speaking, haven’t been that high,” says Dr. Robert Keith, an Alabama Cooperative Extension System nutritionist and Auburn University professor of nutrition and foods.  “Food was sparse with very little saturated fat and was derived mostly from grains, rice and vegetables.”

By modern standards, it was a bleak lifestyle, far removed from the opulent lifestyles now commonplace in burgeoning cities throughout Japan, China, Thailand and Malaysia.

“Like the West decades ago, Asians have prospered by producing more consumer goods and attracting tourist dollars,” Keith says.  “And as a result, they now have more disposable income, and their lifestyle allows them to purchase more convenient food.”

In many cases, Western food providers, particularly fast-food chains, are only happy to meet this demand.

But opulence comes with a price. More often than not, this food, while cheap, convenient and plentiful, also is loaded in saturated fat and, in some cases, sugar. As a result, in only one generation, many Asians have gone from consuming between 1,500 and 2,000 calories a day to between 2,000 and 3,000 calories.  And many of these calories increasingly are being derived from milk, ice cream, cookies and soft drinks.

“It’s not surprising that with this increase in calories, you’re seeing rising rates of obesity,” Keith says. “And the problem is that obesity is a problem not only among young and older adults but is reaching back to young children. And like millions of Western children, they’re developing something health experts seldom ever saw a few decades ago – adult onset diabetes.”

The World Health Organization reports that obesity among Thai children, ages 5 to 12, has risen to nearly 16 percent – a 4 percent increase from only a couple of years ago.

In Japan, where the problem isn’t as serious, obesity has risen from just under 3 percent to almost 10 percent among boys and from almost 3.5 to 8 percent among girls.

Globally, studies show more than 1 billion people are now overweight and at least 300 million are obese. With each passing year, Asians make up an increasingly higher percentage of this total.

Yet, that is only half of the problem, Keith says. Physical inactivity, another contributor to obesity and its related problems, usually accompanies these affluent lifestyles.

“Instead of engaging in daylong manual labor as their parents and grandparents did, many are working in deskbound jobs, Keith says. “And rather than walking to work, they have the convenience of mass transit. And in many cases, their children attend schools that do not offer opportunities for physical exercise.”

Also contributing is the wide availability of televisions, personal computers and video games. Like their counterparts in the United States, millions of Asian children are spending an increasing amount of time either watching television or playing computer games – in the meantime, snacking on the wide array of readily available Western-style snacks.

Another factor associated with affluence, described by Asians as “malling,” also appears to be taking its toll. Like millions of their counterparts in the West, Asians are spending an increasing amount of their leisure time in malls, shopping and munching on fast food.

Unlike their counterparts in the West, many Asian health systems have not yet adapted to deal with the rising rates of heart disease, hypertension and diabetes associated with these more affluent lifestyles – a problem that may be complicated even more by genetics.

Studies, in fact, have shown that Asians are more genetically prone to store more fat around their abdomen – a factor linked with heart disease, diabetes and several cancers. South Asians living in the United Kingdom, for example, have a 50 percent greater risk of dying prematurely from heart disease than the rest of the population.

(Source: Dr. Robert Keith, Alabama Cooperative Extension System Nutritionist and Auburn University Professor of Nutrition and Foods, 334-844-3273.)

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