title: [Global trends in food consumption and nutrition].
abstract: Obesity and lifestyle diseases increase all over the world, especially in developing countries. One reason is the change in diet. This nutrition transition is characterised by improvement in dietary variation, but also by increase in the content of fat and sugar. The transition seems to start at a lower level of income, compared to what occurred in the Western countries after the Second World War. The reason is that many foods are relatively cheaper, especially fat and sugar. The world market is presently flooded with cheap vegetable fat. Urbanisation leads to over-consumption by increasing market access to fatty and sugary foods, including fast foods. Globalization increases the consumption of sweet soda pops, biscuits and snacks produced by multinational companies. Western supermarkets and fast food franchises also promote these dietary changes (McDonaldization). It has been proposed that the population in developing countries is more vulnerable towards these dietary changes in regard to obesity and chronic diseases, due to undernutrition in early life (the Barker hypothesis). We may therefore expect an unprecedented increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases, especially diabetes type 2 in the developing countries. One may question if this increase will be a transient phenomenon, or if we can expect the same pattern as we have seen in the West, namely that the poor become the fat-test segment of the population, with the highest prevalence of chronic diseases.
authors.affiliation: Institutt for allmennmedisin og samfunnsmedisinske fag, Universitet i Oslo, Blindern.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Holmboe-Ottesen
mesh_terms: D019049:Developed Countries; D003906:Developing Countries; D004435:Eating; D005247:Feeding Behavior; D019649:Food Industry / Q000639:trends; D005518:Food Preferences; D014943:Global Health; D018149:Glucose Intolerance / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D009748:Nutrition Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000209:etiology / Q000517:prevention & control; D018673:Nutrition Policy; D009747:Nutritional Physiological Phenomena; D012424:Rural Population; D014505:Urban Population