Overweight Women Outnumber Underfed
Women
March 14, 2005
By Jennifer Warner
Overweight women outnumber underweight or underfed
women worldwide, even in developing countries and rural
areas, according to a new study.
Researchers found overweight women exceeded underweight
women in well over half of the 36 developing countries
studied. Overall, 32 percent of urban women in the developing
countries were classified as overweight compared with
less than 10 percent of urban or rural women who were
underweight.
Although poor countries still lag behind developed
ones in the obesity epidemic (search), researchers say
growing numbers of overweight women present a new health
concern for countries where the main health threat used
to be underfed and underweight women.
The study showed underweight women predominated only
in rural areas of the least developed countries, such
as India.
Overweight Women Expanding Worldwide
In the study, researchers compared data on body mass
index (search) (BMI, a measure of weight in relation
to height used to indicate overweight) collected from
36 developing countries from 1992 to 2000, including
nearly 150,000 women aged 20-49 years. The countries
included 19 in sub-Saharan Africa, eight in Latin America,
four in North Africa and the Middle East, China, India,
and the former Soviet republics.
A BMI of 18.5 or lower was considered underweight,
according to international measures, and a BMI of 25
or more was considered overweight. Using those measures,
a woman 5 feet 5 inches tall would be considered underweight
if she weighed 111 pounds or less and overweight if
she weighed 146 pounds or more.
The results appear in the March issue of the American
Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
Overall, the study showed that the rates of being overweight
among urban women ranged from 10 to 70 percent, but
33 of the 36 countries reported a rate of more than
20 percent and 10 had a rates of more than 50 percent.
The percentage of overweight women was generally twice
as high in urban areas than rural areas, but the rates
of overweight rural women were also substantial. The
rates of overweight rural women were more than 20 percent
in half of the countries studied.
Researchers found that the more developed or urbanized
the countries were, the higher the rates of overweight
women and the smaller the disparities in weight between
urban vs. rural women.
For example, in more-developed countries, the prevalence
of overweight women was 51 percent and 38 percent among
urban and rural women with lower incomes.
Researchers say the results show that although childhood
malnutrition is still a problem in some parts of the
developing world, far fewer countries face such a burden
of undernutrition in young women. They say more studies
are needed on the rates of men and children that are
underweight and overweight in developing nations to
better understand the health issues facing these groups.
Source:www.foxnews.com
|
