Diabetes a growing problem in newly rich Asia
HONG KONG: A cheese burger one day, lasagne the next and chicken
nuggets instead of a bowl of noodles.
Across the continent, a newly-affluent Asian middle class is
splurging after centuries of deprivation, shaking off a diet
traditionally high in vegetables and rice and low in meat and opting
instead for food loaded with saturated fat.
But the new variety of foods available to affluent Asians, coupled
with a less active lifestyle, has a price diabetes.
Health experts say Asians are especially at risk for diabetes caused
by excess weight, fatty foods and lack of exercise as the Asian
metabolism has over the centuries adapted to a frugal diet and a
hard-working lifestyle.
"If you have a poor early life and you then rapidly move into the
direction of plenty, you may be more at risk," said Clive Cockram, a
professor of medicine at the Chinese University in Hong Kong.
Asians are four to six times more likely to get diabetes than
Caucasians, experts say. Health experts are concerned that diabetes, a
chronic and potentially fatal disease, could reach near epidemic
proportions across Asia and among affluent Asian communities living
abroad. "There is more diabetes than AIDS. It will take over as the main
health problem of the developing world soon," said Dr Shirine Boardman,
a diabetes expert at Warwick Hospital in England.
In the Western Pacific, a region stretching from Mongolia and Japan
in the north to New Zealand in the south, the number of diabetics is
expected to hit 100 million in 2025 from 67 million today. The rise in
diabetes cases comes hand-in-hand with an economic boom in China and
India that has brought prosperity to many poor families.
The growing affluence among many in the world's two most populated
countries, experts say, could be causing the jump in diabetes cases as
people in China and India have more money to spend on food and are less
likely to toil in fields.
"There is a theory that famine actually protects people from
diabetes," said Kirpal Marwa, a diabetes expert in Britain.
"The human organism has evolved with a lot of protective mechanisms
that are basically developed over millennia to protect us from
starvation and deprivation and from being hunted down and killed,"
Cockram said.
Reuters |