Economic growth, changing eating habits cause illness to Asians

Economic growth, changing eating habits cause illness to Asians

By Cecil Morella

MANILA (AFP): Increasing numbers of Asians are dying of diseases related to the affluent as diets and eating habits change with the region's rapid economic growth, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

Rising incomes, higher levels of education and better access to medical treatment have helped push life expectancy in the region to a median of above 60, says Han Sang Tae, WHO regional director for the Western Pacific.

But he said the region's economic growth meant that high sugar and salt "fast foods" were replacing traditional and healthier fish and vegetable-based diets, leading to problems such as tooth decay and diabetes.

Han said that while Asia's poorer countries continued to fight diseases such as malaria and tuberculosis, "lifestyle-related diseases" -- high blood pressure, hypertension, diabetes and obesity -- had increased in the region's booming economies.

The WHO blames the shift from traditional diets to refined and sugar-rich meals for the fact that 90 percent of all adults in the region -- encompassing East Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific -- suffer from tooth decay.

Recent WHO studies show that the incidence of obesity in the region has been increasing in all countries. Some 41 percent of Australian men and 23 percent of Australian women were found to be obese.

In Singapore, the number of diabetes cases has been climbing, and in Vietnam, a new convert to the market economy, deaths from cardio-vascular complications have been on the rise.

Benefit

But the WHO has stressed that not all "lifestyle diseases" were caused by improving economic fortunes.

One study showed that obesity, while "becoming a problem in the affluent young of other countries," was "most prevalent in the island states of the Pacific" due to traditional diets.

The study also showed that changing diets had benefited some rural populations. It cited the case of China, where low-protein and micronutrient-deficient diets were being replaced by healthier eating habits.

Han said economic prosperity had also increased access to cigarettes -- often marketed as a social emancipator for women -- across the Asia-Pacific region.

"Of course, they all smoke. It's a fashion. In Japan, Singapore, all these young girls, they think cigarette puffing is a kind of fashion," Han said.

In China alone, the WHO estimates some two million people will die of lung cancer and related diseases by 2025.

It said deaths attributable to heart disease in China had tripled to 214.3 per 100,000 people over the past three decades.

Han also said that alcohol was now more available, contributing to problems such as drunken driving.

Asians "can afford to buy beer so they take more," he said.

He cited the case of South Korea, where alcohol-related traffic accidents claim almost 40 people per 100,000 annually, one of the world's worst road safety records.