Related: Health experts warn of global obesity pandemic

    BEIJING, Sept. 7 -- The rapid modernization of China and other Asian countries has produced an alarming spike in the rate of obesity and diabetes, which could undermine the region's economic and social stability, experts warned yesterday.

    Asia currently has around two-thirds of the world's diabetics, or around 90 million people with the disease, according to Paul Zimmet, the chairman of the International Obesity Task Force. The majority of those are type 2 diabetics.

    Four out of five of the world's most diabetic populations are also in Asia India, China, Pakistan and Japan and the number of diabetics in Asia is set to reach 120 million by 2010, said Zimmet, citing World Health Organization data.

    By 2025, the number of Asians with diabetes could hit 198 million, he said.

    Meanwhile, the rate of obesity among Asian children is increasing by about 1 per cent each year, roughly the same rate as in Australia, the United States and Britain, according to the task force's Asia-Pacific director, Tim Gill.

    "It's a social and economic disaster," said Zimmet.

    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, both experts agree.

    As their economies have grown, many Asian countries that were once agriculturally self-sufficient have 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 has increased from around 1 litre per year to up to 17 litres in the past two decades, Gill said.

    "It's a fairly dramatic increase and with that there's got to be a lot of extra calories," he said, adding that South Korea, Malaysia and Thailand have also seen large increases in their oil consumption over recent years.

    Gill said the underlying causes of Asian obesity are no different than in Europe or the United States, but that it has 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.

    Meanwhile, while many Asian countries are busy gearing up to deal with the possible threat of bird flu, they are ignoring the looming health crisis of obesity and diabetes, Zimmet said.

    Most Asian countries "don't have the health care systems" to meet the cost of treating diabetes and its related illnesses, such as strokes, kidney failure, heart disease and blindness, he said.

    Zimmet has warned that the cost of treating diabetes in Asia could reach into the hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and could have dire consequences for the region's economic and social stability.

    "We're seeing type 2 diabetes in children and they're being inadequately treated," he said.

    "So they're going to have heart troubles, kidney failure in the early 20s and 30s, and that will affect work force productivity."

    Diabetes may also affect fertility rates, leading to changes in birth patterns and population levels, he warned.

    "The actual productivity of countries will fall," he added.

    (Source: China Daily/Agencies)