I found this article titled, "Globalization and the Epidemiology of Obesity" in the International Journal of Epidemiology.

Wang Y. Cross conducted research about the obesity of children by applying standardized consensus-based measures of body weight to relatively recent cross-sectional samples in three large nations: China, Russia, and the US.  The results were as follows: obesity and overweight were relatively common in US children while underweight was rare, the reverse was true of China, and Russia stood between the other two nations.  The study went deeper by examing the relationship between obesity and underweight children in relation to their ocioeconomic status and rural-urban residence.

It goes on to explain how this cross-national data can be evidence of globalization.  Once it defines globalization as the process of worldwide integration and unification of previously local, national, and regional phenomena into global units, it compares obesity with global governments, global corporations, global media, global food systems.  The article reads, "To the extent that obesity represents a worldwide epidemic, it constitutes a global pandemic rather than a set of independent occurrences in various nations. The crucial point in thinking about globality is that global conditions have underlying global causes and also require global interventions."

It points out that global corporations are establishing industrialized agro-food systems in almost all nations which provides consumers with constant access to unlimited amounts of relatively inexpensive calorifically dense foods to all people through supermarket, catering, vending, takeout, home delivered, drive through, and fast/snack foods.  Also, other global processes provide relatively inexpensive transportation, communication, and other activity-sparing systems through automobiles, television, and energy-saving components of the built environment that minimize physical activity levels for people worldwide.  The article holds global food systems and global vehicles, appliances, and mass media responsible for global obesity.

Here is a link to the article:  Globalization and the epidemiology of obesity

--Lauren Kelly