More than a billion people are overweight and 800 million undernourished, experts say

Related articles

• Chewing the fat: New theories on world's obesity pandemic
• Bacteria might make you fat
• Obese older women at higher risk of breast cancer
• Fat makes it harder to conceive
• Fat bellies linked to dementia

SYDNEY, 15 August 2006: The world now has more overweight people than hungry ones and governments should design economic strategies to influence national diets, an international conference of experts has heard.

The transition from a starving world to an obese one had happened with dramatic speed, U.S. nutritionist Barry Popkin told the annual conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists. "The reality is that globally far more obesity than undernutrition exists," Popkin said, adding that while hunger was slowly declining, obesity was rapidly spreading.

There are more than a billion overweight people in the world and 800 million who are undernourished, he said at the Gold Coast convention centre near Brisbane. The world population is estimated at about 6.5 billion.

"Obesity is the norm globally and undernutrition, while still important in a few countries and in targeted populations in many others, is no longer the dominant disease," he said. The "burden of obesity", with its related illnesses, was also shifting from the rich to the poor, not only in urban but in rural areas around the world, he added.

China typified the changes, with a major shift in diet from cereals to animal products and vegetable oils accompanied by a decline in physical work, more motorised transport and more television viewing. But all countries had failed to address the obesity "boom", the University of North Carolina professor said.

Food prices could be used to manipulate people's diets and tilt them towards healthier options, he suggested.
"For instance, if we charge money for every calorie of soft drink and fruit drink that was consumed, people would consume less of it. If we subsidise fruit and vegetable production, people would consume more of it and we would have a healthier diet."

Benjamin Senauer, co-director of the Food Industry Centre at the University of Minnesota and author of Ending Hunger in Our Lifetime: Food Security and Globalisation, used a comparative study of lifestyles in the United States and Japan to show how the costs of food and transport play a role in the problem.

Japan has one of the world's lowest rates of obesity and the U.S. one of the highest. "The average Japanese household spends almost a quarter of its income on food compared to under 14 per cent in the U.S.," Senauer said.

While a direct tax on food in the U.S. to reduce obesity would not be politically acceptable, agricultural subsidies which resulted in cheap food could be reduced. But other factors such as exercise also played an important role and again economic influences were involved, he said.

"Japanese cities are based on efficient public transport - and walking. The average American commutes to work, drives to the supermarket and does as little walking as possible," he said.

The average Japanese man walks 6.4 km a day, while almost a quarter of U.S. adults may only walk between 1,000 and 3,000 steps a day, Senauer said. While the relative cost of calories and fat had decreased over time, technology had eliminated much of the need for physical activity during work.

For most Americans, getting enough physical activity now required "a conscious commitment to exercise and often cost money, such as the price of a round of golf or membership of a gym," he told the conference. "Obesity and overweight bring with them significant risks of chronic disease and premature death and adjusting domestic policy to encourage a less sedentary lifestyle is literally a matter of life and death."