The rapid modernisation of China and other Asian countries has produced an alarming spike in the rate of obesity and diabetes among their populations, experts warned today.
The UK-based International Obesity Task Force (IOTF) said Asian countries were now encountering rises in childhood obesity which are congruent with that of western countries, such as the UK.
Tim Gill, the IOTF's Asia-Pacific director, said the rate of obesity among Asian children was increasing by about 1% each year, roughly the same rate as in Britain, the US and Australia. Paul Zimmet, the chairman of the IOTF, said: "It's a social and economic disaster."
The threat posed by obesity to Asia's economic and social stability is one of the topics Mr Gill, Mr Zimmet and other experts are debating at a conference this week in Sydney.
Mr Zimmet said Asia currently had around two-thirds of the world's diabetics, around 90 million people. The majority of those had type 2 diabetes, which was often associated with being overweight, he said.
Six Asian countries - India, China, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan and Bangladesh - are listed in the World Health Organisation's 10 countries with the greatest prevalence of the disease. Mr Zimmet said that by 2025, the number of Asians with diabetes could hit 198 million.
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, Mr Zimmet and Mr Gill said.
As their economies had grown, many Asian countries that were once agriculturally self-sufficient had 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 had increased from around 1 litre per year to 17 litres in the past two decades, Mr Gill said. "It's a fairly dramatic increase and with that there's got to be a lot of extra calories," he said.
Korea, Malaysia and Thailand had also seen large increases in their oil consumption over recent years.
Mr Gill said the underlying causes of Asian obesity were no different than in Europe or the United States, but it had occurred on "a highly compressed time scale" due to the region's rapid industrial growth. "One minute they're living and producing subsistence farming to - in the space of 20 years - living in cities, working in factories, going to school ... and getting fat," he said.
Mr Zimmet said while many Asian countries were busy gearing up to deal with the possible threat of bird flu, they were ignoring the looming health crisis of obesity and diabetes. Most Asian countries "don't have the health care systems" to meet the cost of treating diabetes and related illnesses, such as strokes, kidney failure, heart disease and blindness, he said.
While the research was still unproven, Mr Zimmet said some studies suggested Asians may be genetically predisposed to diabetes, contracting the disease much earlier than their less-overweight counterparts in the west.
Diabetes might also affect fertility rates, leading to changes in birth patterns and population levels, he warned.
A recent report by the UK's Department of Health predicted that three in four men and three in five women in the UK would be overweight or obese by 2010. The research warned of rocketing obesity rates among British children, one in five of whom would be obese within four years, it was predicted.
