Flavored juice drinks sit on a shelf in a grocery store in Manila. (Bloomberg)

According to The Wall Street Journal, MANILA — Economies in Southeast Asia are not the only things growing in the region. Waistlines are too – and that has doctors and health experts worried about the strains a clutch of new health problems could put on many countries still in the process of developing.

Rapid economic growth has created new and expanding middles classes in places like Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. But new affluence is also driving up the rate of “life-style” diseases, including hypertension, cancer, diabetes and chronic respiratory illness, say doctors.

Together, those diseases account for 80% of the deaths in Asia, but health experts say it need not be that way – most could be addressed by people simply changing the way they eat and live.

“We must have behavior change,” Shin Young-soo, the World Health Organization’s regional director for the Western Pacific, said during a recent health summit in Manila.

As regional incomes improve, people have more money to spend on fast food and processed snacks. In recent years, demand for meat and dairy has also risen dramatically in many of Southeast Asia’s emerging economies.

But changes in diets combined with lack of exercise has made Asians more prone to diabetes than their counterparts in the West, said Dr. Shin, one of nearly 200 health and development experts attending a week-long gathering here aimed at discussing non-communicable diseases and finding way to combat them.

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