Photo: lulugaia (flickr)

It seems logical that a country’s rising wealth would lead to better health indicators. But the truth is that as incomes rise, obesity and other chronic diseases increase right along with them.

A recent article in the medical journal Lancet claims China’s rising rate of chronic disease is creating a “health and economic time bomb” that could offset much of the country’s economic gains. As China has grown wealthier, a combination of easy access to high-fat food, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and a large number of smokers has contributed to the rapid increase in obesity and its comorbidities, including cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and some cancers.

In 1973, hypertension, heart disease and stroke caused fewer than half of all deaths in China. Today, these diseases are responsible for three out of every four deaths. The country's economic losses to chronic disease will reach $558 billion by 2015, according to the World Health Organization.

China is not the only place experiencing this rising-income, failing-health phenomenon. Countries of all income levels are all seeing chronic disease skyrocket. But in transitioning economies, this increase in chronic disease is creating a terrible paradox: simultaneous afflicitons of “diseases of the affluent" and diseases linked to extreme poverty. It's a "double burden," says the WHO, that's exacerbated by “inadequate pre-natal, infant and young child nutrition followed by exposure to high-fat, energy-dense, micronutrient-poor foods and lack of physical activity.”

The Lancet report urges China to promote preventive health to lower chronic-disease rates. They call for campaigns to persuade people to consume less salt, stop smoking and exercise more frequently. But if the WHO is right about pre-natal and childhood nutrition being to blame, Chinese health officials will need to focus on more than the adults' own habits. Making sure pregnant mothers and families with small kids practice good nutrition habits may be the only way to guarantee a healthier future.

Food distribution line. Photo: L. Boscardi/UNHCR

The UN is preparing plans to ration its food aid to people in need if new donations don't provide more money soon, according to an article in the Financial Times this week. Rising global food prices are putting serious pressures on the World Food Program (WFP)'s budget, to the tune of several million dollars each week.

"The WFP crisis talks come as the body sees the emergence of a "new area of hunger" in developing countries where even middle-class, urban people are being "priced out of the food market" because of rising food prices.

The warning suggests that the price jump in agricultural commodities - such as wheat, corn, rice and soyabeans - is having a wider impact than thought, hitting countries that have previously largely escaped hunger."

It is not just the UN that will have to ration its food aid. Countries like Egypt and Pakistan are reinstating or strengthening rationing systems for the first time in decades. Unfortunately, the crisis will be getting worse in the short term. According to the US Department of Agriculture "high agricultural commodities prices [will] continue for at least the next two to three years."