A World Health Organisation report released last year has put eight Pacific Islands nations among 10 top countries with the most obese people with several of them having numbers in excess of eighty percent.

Dev Nadkarni
Just a couple of decades ago, a leading news magazine that is published worldwide ran a cover story about the alarming growth in the number of overweight people across the world. Rising disposable incomes, more leisure and a sedentary lifestyle were responsible for the widening girths of more and more people in the developed nations, it said.

Much in line with the prevailing view of the time, obesity, the magazine concluded, was a problem of plenty. Ailments linked with obesity—such as diabetes, hypertension and coronary heart disease—were termed ‘lifestyle diseases’ mainly because it seemed to affect affluent societies in the developed world. In those times, obesity was hardly associated with the poorer, developing world.

Nutritionists, economists and health experts hold a completely opposite view today.Obesity is no longer viewed as a problem exclusive to rich nations. It is no longer a problem of plenty anymore. In complete contrast to the view two decades ago, obesity and the lifestyle diseases associated with it are today seen as a problem of poverty.

The number of people in the developing world that are suffering from obesity and the diseases it brings along in its wake has caught up with the volume of sufferers in the developed world. It is this fact that has caused the paradoxical change in perception of lifestyle diseases as being a problem of poor nations far more than that of the rich.

Over the past two decades, the prevalence of lifestyle diseases in countries like India, China, Africa and the Pacific Islands nations has grown at an alarming rate. Forty million people each in China and India are believed to be affected by diabetes and the number is growing. Diabetes rates are expected to double in South America and increase by as much as 80 percent in Africa and 56 percent in the Indian sub-continent.

A World Health Organisation report released last year has put eight Pacific Islands nations among 10 top countries with the most obese people with several of them having numbers in excess of eighty percent.

In the Pacific today, lifestyle diseases have grown to become the number one health worry—not just because of their worrisome growth but also because of the inability of their governments to adequately address the problem at all levels—from prevention to effective treatment.

PROBLEM OF POVERTY: It is interesting to see how and why obesity and lifestyle diseases have turned into a problem of poverty from being viewed as a problem of plenty just two decades ago.

The processed and packaged food industry is more globalised today than it was at any time before. There are more gallons of calorie rich but nutrient poor sugary drinks pushed across counters just as there are more glitzy and shiny packs of high salt content deep fried foods and fatty processed meat products.

Increasing volumes have driven prices down to such an extent that they are far more affordable to poorer sections of society than traditional foods. In several Pacific Islands countries, cheaply imported foodstuff that are high in ingredients known to be responsible for obesity and related diseases have replaced traditional staple foods. A tin of corned beef or mutton or a kilo of highly polished rice is cheaper—and more convenient—than growing traditional staple food like taro.

Close trading ties with the western world are another reason. With stricter nutrition value driven food regulations in these countries, the developing nations like those of the Pacific Islands have over the years turned into dumping grounds for fat-ridden meat that would be nearly impossible to sell at home legally.  

Add to all that the lax controls and regulation in the import of poor nutritional value processed food products in the developing world owing to a number of reasons including ignorance of consequences and affordability—and it is not hard to see why lifestyle diseases have suddenly become a problem of poverty.

High fat, high calorie food and drink is now ubiquitous and in great demand, thanks to low prices and aggressive marketing and advertising campaigns. It is easy for the poor to fill up on cheaply and widely available junk food without a thought to how they may be harming their bodies.

Fast food companies have been forced to rethink their offerings over the past few years. In the developed world, they have come up with new advertising campaigns that underscore nutritive value. Salads, fruit and fruit juices are a larger part of their menus than ever before. Governments in these countries have made it compulsory for fast food vendors to publish nutritional values on the packaging and containers of the food they sell.

That is yet to happen in the developing world. Awareness of the link of calorie rich diets to lifestyle diseases is still abysmally low and matters little as long as the food offered is cheap and available freely. On their part, global fast food majors operating in these countries do nothing of what they are forced to do in the developed world in terms of publishing nutrition information and introducing healthier options in the absence of government regulations.

Advertising campaigns to sell them in higher volumes carry on unhindered, bringing an ever growing number of younger people into the pale of what undoubtedly threatens to be the biggest health problem for developing countries in the near term.

One that not just threatens their poorly resourced healthcare systems but also their economies—and their very future, what with some experts darkly predicting the extinction of entire races by the turn of the century because of lifestyle diseases.