From famine
To obesity

In China about 200 million people are overweight and the number of obese people would reach 90 million. Compared to 1992, an increase of respectively 39% and 97%. The phenomenon seems to affect mainly young people living in cities. A recent survey of 80 thousand Chinese children has increased by 156% (one hundred fifty-six percent!) of the obese in just ten years, from 1996 to 2006.
Serious consequences from a health perspective. Diabetes is becoming the second leading cause of mortality from hypertension.
Determinants, a radical change in diet and reduced physical activity. As in much of Asia, until the sixties the traditional diet of the poor areas, both rural and urban areas, consisted mainly of rice, vegetables, legumes, moderate amounts of fish. For several years however, especially among newly urbanized populations, increased consumption of meals already prepared in many stores come up in the city. From supermarkets, then, a real incentive to consumption of meat and foods high in salt, sugar and fat. Food is often imported from the West or in any industrial production (bread, pasta, cakes, drinks ...).
According to the alarming forecasts of the World Health Organisation (WHO), in 2015 the number of overweight adults on the planet could reach 2.3 billion and three billion in 2030. In 2005 there were "only" 1.6. But of those three billion expected, 80% would live in developing countries. A problem almost non-existent, in what was then called "third world", until a couple generations ago. The discovery of this true epidemic, it was revealed in all its drama in the "International Congress on Obesity" in Stockholm in July 2010. Previously, even in 2001, the Worldwatch Institute had made public a certain neglected hitherto. In the world, for the first time, the number of overweight people corresponded to that of people who are too skinny, confirming that the number of obese people was increasing dramatically in the "developing countries", otherwise known as "emerging."
China, India, Latin America, North Africa ... in almost all of the "South", has passed an excess malnutrition as a problem than under-nutrition. And the contradiction does not seem to want to save even sub-Saharan Africa. If still prevails in rural areas under-nutrition, increase in the cities people are too fat. A study conducted in Burkina Faso, where the urban population has increased seven-fold since 1975, has calculated that a city woman in three is overweight, compared to 4% of women living in rural areas. Just as obesity can coexist in an individual, and nutritional deficiencies in some African countries to meet in the same family can obese children with grandparents and parents who have experienced hunger. Recent studies seem to confirm that obesity, hypertension and diabetes are more likely to affect young people where nutrient deficiencies have marked previous generations.
In India and in Central America has been taken into account the existence of a hereditary predisposition. A study conducted in Mexico (the most affected, on the list for the unenviable world record of childhood obesity) has identified a gene with a frequency of 33% among the indigenous Maya and Tarahumara. His, it is assumed, the responsibility for the early onset of type 2 diabetes, increasingly common in a population made up of 80% mestizo.
And things are looking even worse in India.
Interviewed by Le Monde, the founder of the research center in Madras (MDRF) had drawn a dramatic picture. "Diabetes-said-is spreading dramatically in rural areas, affecting more and more young Indians and the poor". Disease in the past by rich city dwellers (at least in India), is now spreading in rural areas. Only in the last three years has increased by 25%, due to the "development" and changing lifestyles.
The construction of paved roads and increasing the purchasing power of rural people would be the two determining factors. The farmers do not jump on foot or by bicycle, but in motion by reducing the daily physical activity. The increasing use of tractors has made a further contribution.
And in almost every village of small shops the shelves are filled with chocolates and other sweets. After having saturated the markets of the metropolis major power companies (PepsiCo, Cabbury ...) are now turning to those rural areas. The effect was particularly devastating because, experts say "in the population there is a genetic predisposition to diabetes." In some states (such as in Tamil Nadu, one of the most economically developed) 10% of the population suffers from this disease, while still in the seventies the percentage did not exceed 1%. To be affected are younger and younger people (many around thirty years) and in a country where 30% of the population lives in the countryside, the consequences could be devastating, both for the health system and the economy. Corresponds to a dose of insulin and then several days of work for many farmers there is no possibility of treatment.
The research center in Madras is working with some U.S. universities to "better understand the genetics of the disease" whose symptoms would be different from those experienced in the United States. Meanwhile, professionals (engineers, industrialists, politicians ...) continue to rely on "development and progress."

Gianni Sartori