Obesity

Populations worldwide are becoming more corpulent. The levels of overweight and obesity in many low- to middle-income countries such as Mexico, Egypt, and South Africa rival that of the country used as the benchmark for this problem, the USA. Moreover, the rates of increase in obesity in these countries are double to quadruple those in the USA. In this article, Barry Popkin reports on the impact of important shifts in nutritional patterns and the trend towards inactivity.

As a species, our condition has changed: from prolonged periods of fasting and occasional gorging, to nearly constant feeding with rarely occurring periods of fasting. The constant availability of ‘grazing opportunities’ has contributed to a change in the body build of humans towards increasing body weight, overweight, and obesity. With this change has come a massive increase in the number of people with diabetes and diabetes- and- obesity-related health problems.

The Middle East comprises countries such as Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, the Palestinian Autonomous Territories and Syria, and contains several ethnic and religious groups. Moslem Arabs, however, are, by far, the largest population group and they form the dominant culture. Certain values belonging to this culture serve to make acceptance of diabetes nutritional therapy difficult. Nevertheless, it cannot be ignored that people with diabetes in the Middle East have to survive and try to be an accepted part of the society in which they live.

The killer twins – diabetes and obesity – are set to shatter the national health budget, according to two of Australia’s leading diabetes experts. They said diabetes and its associated complications, including heart and kidney disease, were poised to become Australia’s most significant and costly public health problem within a decade, swamping future health budgets and resources.

People with obesity have been illustrated by artists throughout our modern cultural history. Who would not recognize the clearly overweight Milon Venus or obese women in paintings by Rubens? These people, however, were rather rare exceptions during times when labour required physical work and food shortage was much more common than in the present. Although we lack specific data, it is likely that the industrial revolution together with improved food hygiene were associated with an increase in the prevalence of obesity at least among those whose labour was physically less demanding.

Editor-in-Chief's editorial

President's editorial

2002 marked the 45th anniversary of the Japan Diabetes Society. The Society carries out diverse activities in support of basic and clinical research into diabetes, which is a major health burden in Japan. Indeed, recent research indicates that the Japanese are more likely than Europeans to develop Type 2 diabetes. Today there are 6.9 million people with diabetes in Japan. It is predicted that, if current lifestyle habits remain unchanged, there will be 10.8 million people with diabetes in the country by the year 2010.

We know that in both Western and Asian adults in the vulnerable overweight groups with impaired glucose tolerance, modest weight loss with specific changes in diet and physical activity can reduce the likelihood of developing Type 2 diabetes. Marked weight loss in severely obese people with diabetes can also ameliorate the risks from their diabetes perhaps for a decade or more. However, clinical interventions to achieve this require intensive personal supervision, which,

So-called 'late onset diabetes' is now more widely termed Type 2 diabetes. And for very good reasons. It was previously the case that childhood and adolescent diabetes was nearly exclusively Type 1 diabetes and that Type 2 diabetes very rarely affected the young. Sadly, this is no longer true. As the spread of 'westernized' lifestyles gives rise to a steep increase in rates of obesity worldwide, Type 2 diabetes is rapidly emerging among children and adolescents.