Obesity Is Stalking Poor Countries, Where Hunger Once Reigned

Obesity Is Stalking Poor Countries, Where Hunger Once Reigned

International and Arab News

You might not notice it from the way that inflation, conflict and pandemic have driven up the cost of food in recent years, but the specter of hunger that has haunted humanity for millennia is moving closer to being vanquished.

In middle-income countries, the number of people undernourished fell by roughly a quarter, or 162 million, between 2006 and 2020. That’s more than enough to offset the 43 million increase in low-income nations, which are mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.

In China, home to most of history’s biggest famines, the prevalence of childhood stunting — a typical indicator of malnutrition — is now at levels comparable to the US The shift in India has been just dramatic. In 2006, more than a third of women were underweight. By 2019, that figure had been cut almost in half.

There’s a worrying trend happening in the background of those figures, however. The share of Indian women who were overweight also nearly doubled, to the extent that it now affects more people than undernourishment.

The picture is the same among men. In the middle-income countries where three-quarters of humanity live, the scourge of undernourishment is being replaced by a fast-rising epidemic of obesity, along with