Obesity among China's 1.3 billion people doubled among women and tripled in men from 1989 to 2000, according to a study published today in the journal Health Affairs. China's rising prosperity, which allows more people to afford meat, dairy foods, vegetable oils and sedentary living, is fueling the growth, the study said.

The number of obese and overweight people in China, now at 325 million, could double in 20 years, spurring more diabetes and heart disease in what was once one of the world's leanest populations, said Barry Popkin, the study author and a nutrition professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It also could be a boon for drugmakers, said Ray Hill, an analyst with IMS Health Inc., a health-care research company.

China ``has the highest growth rate for pharmaceutical sales than anywhere in the world,'' said Hill in a July 6 telephone interview. China was the world's ninth-largest pharmaceutical market two years ago and will be the fifth- largest by 2012, he said.

The study collected data on 20,000 people in China over the last 15 years and found that participants are eating more energy-dense foods, which have higher saturated fats and calories than vegetables and carbohydrates, said Popkin. At the same time, activity levels are dropping with more white-collar and manufacturing jobs, leaving China with the same caloric imbalance afflicting many Western countries: people eating more food and burning fewer calories.

Deaths from heart disease and cancer linked to diet have climbed 20 percent since 1985, according to Popkin's research.

Exploding Hypertension

``The prevalence of hypertension has exploded and every day, China and India are producing more than half of the new cases of diabetes diagnosed daily,'' said Popkin.

For centuries, people in China consumed small amounts of meat, dairy products and high-fat vegetable oils, according to research by T. Colin Campbell, a Cornell University professor who authored a book on how the traditional Chinese diet prevents cardiovascular disease and cancer. Heart disease and cancer rates in China began to rise in 1989, he said in a telephone interview today.

Drugmakers view China as the bright spot for growth, said IMS Health's Hill. Sales of drugs in China reached $18.7 billion in 2007, a 26 percent increase from 1998, according to Norwalk, Connecticut-based IMS Health. That increase helped double China's health-care spending from 1978 to 2002, said Popkin.

``There is a clear correlation between economic growth and how much a country spends on health care,'' said Hill. ``By 2030, China will be number 2, behind the U.S.'' in gross domestic product.

Pfizer, the world's largest drugmaker, has invested $500 million in China in the last 15 years, the New York-based company said. Astra-Zeneca Plc's China sales more than quadrupled from $85 million in 2001 to $422 million in 2007, said Zhou Yi, spokeswoman for the London-based company, in an e- mail.

To contact the reporter on this story: Cristina Alesci in New York at calesci@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: July 8, 2008 12:07 EDT

bloomberg.com/apps/news