Dieting Must
Become a Global Phenomenon
News reports and academic studies frequently site the
fast food diet and sedentary lifestyle of North Americans as the source
of our so called "obesity epidemic". These reports have conditioned us
into thinking of obesity as a North American problem. But is it? Not
according to the World Health Organization.
The WHO is the United Nation's coordinating authority
for health. As such, it takes a global view that we don't get from
media focused on grabbing the attention of a local audience. For this
reason many North Americans don't realize that obesity is a global
problem. On the Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health
page of the World Health Organization website is an interesting report
on the growth of obesity outside North America.
The report states that the obesity epidemic is a global
phenomenon. It claims that one-sixth of the world's populations can now
be considered overweight. Of the one billion overweight people on the
planet, a many as three hundred million are considered to be clinically
obese. This is thought to be a significant contributor to slow recovery
times, chronic disease and other debilitating conditions that add
greatly to the world's already over-taxed health care systems.
In third world countries the cause of this growing
problem seems to be dietary changes. Increased consumption of
inexpensive but non-nutritional junk food is increasing in the era of
globalization. These foods frequently have high salt and/or sugar
content and are, as well high in saturated fats. When this drop in
dietary quality is combined with a decrease in physical activity, as is
inevitable with the spread of industrialized solutions to local
infrastructure problems, obesity rates rise. According to the WHO
obesity rates have tripled since 1980 not just on the United States,
but also in Great Britain, the Middle East, many areas of Europe,
particularly Eastern Europe, Aystralia and even China.
Optimum weight is measured using the body mass index
(BMI). BMI is determined by dividing weight (measured in kilograms) by
the square of height (measured in meters). The formula for this is
kg/m'. A BMI over 25 is overweight and a BMI of over 30 is obese.
People with a BMI below 18.5 are considered underweight.
The WHO study found that adult BMI levels of 22-23 are
the average in Africa and Asia, while levels of 25-27 are the average
throughout Europe and North America as well as in some North African
and Pacific Island countries and in parts of Latin America. Because
wealth distribution in Third World countries is more polarized than in
North America and Europe, analysis of weight statistics for the Third
World must take this into account.
When the analysis takes this into account and makes
allowances for the larger proportion of malnourished populations in the
Third World, it becomes clear that in countries that are in the midst
of transitioning from agrarian to industrialized societies,
over-nutrition exists side-by-side with malnutrition.
Globalization has led to the rise of a substantial
middle class in the two most populous nations on Earth, China and
India. This is being accompanied by an upward shift in the average BMI
for many populations within these countries. And according to the WHO,
recent studies show, "that people who were undernourished in early life
and then become obese in adulthood, tend to develop conditions such as
high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes at an earlier age and
in more severe form than those who were never undernourished."
See Our Top Recommended
Weight Loss Program »
|