NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – The blubber epidemic has taken hold in many developing countries, new research finds, with the burden weighing nearly entirely on the nations’ wealthy.

Meanwhile, poor people within the same borders still can’t place on enough pounds.

The findings contrast the pattern in developed nations, such as the U.S., where blubber tends to have a heavier impact on the poor.

“There’s a lot of discussion on how the problems of blubber and overweight are now spreading to poor and developing countries,” lead researcher SV Subramanian of the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston, told Reuters Health.

But the data to back up this assertion have been lacking, and the question of who is most affected within those countries is nearly never asked, he added.

In the new study, Subramanian and his colleagues looked for trends in the weights of more than half a million women crossways 54 developing countries between 1994 and 2008.

Overall, they found that about a quarter of the women were overweight, with the rate varying widely between countries — from three out of apiece four women in Egypt to just 6 percent in Ethiopia.

More importantly, stated Subramanian, was what his team found when they looked within apiece country: As levels of income and education rose, so did individuals’ weight.

People ranked in the top quarter of the population based on wealth, for example, had more than double the risk of being overweight compared to individuals in the bottom quarter, report the researchers in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Meanwhile, a substantial portion of the population — often more than the number overweight or fat — still suffered from being underweight.

“On the one hand, you have populations where there is a need to increase calorie intake, and on the other, you have the rich folks who are over-consuming,” noted Subramanian.

An explanation for this paired pattern is not absolutely clear. Food is cheap and convenient for well-to-do populations, he explained. Their neighborhoods typically home a lot of restaurants where people can easily consume a lot without expending energy to cook.

He also noted that cultural phenomena might be driving some of these patterns. A marriage-aged girl might be expected to look healthy as opposed to anorexic.

“I think the fact that these two problems are happening in distinctly separate groups offers a very one-of-a-kind opportunity to actually do something,” Subramanian said. “The challenge is finding the balance.”

For the overweight, he recommended that interventions through education and the media might do the trick. Some evidence recommends that such campaigns might be responsible for eventually inverting the relationship of wealth and weight in rich countries.

But simply providing more calories might not be the answer for the poor, noting that Egypt’s government subsidized a lot of trans fats and subsequently saw increases in blubber within poor populations. They also saw continued problems with underweight among those still too poor to purchase the cheap food.

“We should have a more comprehensive policy that focuses incentives on the right compositions of nutrients,” he added. “That way we can solve the problem of underweight, while also controlling the problem of overweight.”

SOURCE: http://link.reuters.com/kaj46q American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, online November 10, 2010.