Diet and Health: Diseases and Food 279still remain differences between urban and rural populations, probably due to their
different levels of activity, access to dietary ingredients and cultural mores.^25 The
more urban population also consumes more added sugars as it gets wealthier,
whereas the rural population consumes less. Popkin and his colleagues’ point is
that changing economic circumstances markedly shape the mix of nutrients in the
diet and that life-style factors – such as the degree of urbanization^26 and changing
labour patterns – have a major effect on health.
The transition is occurring in areas that usually receive little food policy atten-
tion. A study by the WHO has reported that in the Middle East changing diets
and life-styles are now resulting in changing patterns of both mortality and mor-
bidity there too.^27 Dietary and health changes can be rapid. In Saudi Arabia, for
instance, meat consumption doubled and fat consumption tripled between the
mid-1970s and the early 1990s; in Jordan, there has, in the same timescale, been a
sharp rise in deaths from cardiovascular disease. These problems compound older
Middle-Eastern health problems such as protein-energy malnutrition, especially
among children. In China, the national health profile began to follow a more
Western pattern of diet-related disease as the population gradually urbanized,^28
coinciding with an increase in degenerative diseases. Consumption of legumes
such as soyabean was replaced by animal protein in the form of meat. One expert
Source: FAO/World Bank/Popkin, B (1998) ‘The nutrition transition and its health implications
on lower income countries’, Public Health Nutrition, 1, 5–21
Figure 13.6 Relationship between the proportion of energy from each food source and
GNP per capita, with the proportion of the urban population at 75 per cent, 1990