Aug. 19 (Bloomberg) -- Malaysia is stepping up a government campaign to get its 26 million people to eat right and exercise more as Malaysians get fatter and health-care costs rise. One in five Malaysians is overweight or obese, with a body mass index of 25 or more. That's higher than South Korea or the Philippines, according to the Ministry of Health. About 38 percent of Malaysian housewives are overweight, the highest among five Asian countries that include Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam and South Korea, a survey by market researcher TNS Asiapanel showed.

"Tackling obesity is one of the priorities of the ministry as it leads to several other chronic diseases'' including diabetes, heart disease, renal failure and gall bladder problems, said Lee Kah Choon, parliamentary secretary at the Health Ministry. These are "preventable lifestyle diseases which are also the most costly.'' Preventing overweight Malaysians from developing chronic diseases may help Southeast Asia's third-largest economy contain health-care costs, which almost doubled in the five years to 2003. Malaysia's government spent 7.56 billion ringgit ($2 billion) on health care in 2003, or 6.9 percent of the national budget, compared with 6.6 percent in 1998, the ministry said. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in Malaysia. The health ministry is warning Malaysians that "hypertension, diabetes and obesity equals death penalty'' in newspaper advertisements in its campaign. The government is also forcing some food producers to provide nutritional information on packaging.

Health Concerns

The health campaign, into its third phase since it kicked off in 1991, is gaining in importance because lifestyle changes have caused the percentage of obese people to almost triple in the past eight years. The ministry is taking its message to companies in addition to its past focus on schools. The prevalence of diabetes in Malaysia rose to 8.3 percent of the population in 1996 from 6.3 percent in 1986, the health ministry said. Almost 3 million Malaysians have high blood pressure and more than 10,000 people in the country die each year from hypertension, stroke, heart attack and renal failure, the New Straits Times reported in March. "Younger people are getting heart attacks, more people are getting heart attacks,'' said Lekhraj Rampal, head of epidemiology and biostatistics at the faculty of medicine and health sciences at Universiti Putra Malaysia. Malaysians are becoming "less physically active and living a comfortable life'' because of better "socioeconomic conditions and changing of our lifestyle.''

Fast Food

The size of Malaysia's economy in current prices has almost quadrupled since 1990. Manufacturing makes up about a third of gross domestic product, compared with a fifth in 1980, when more than half of exports were commodities. The increasing popularity of fast food, spurred by the rising necessity to eat out amid longer working hours and greater female participation in the workforce, has added to an already oil- and cholesterol-rich diet for many Malaysians. In the U.S., 30 percent of adults 20 years of age and older -- more than 60 million people -- are obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site. KFC Holdings (Malaysia) Bhd., which holds the franchise for KFC restaurants in Malaysia, is the country's largest fast-food operator, with about 330 outlets nationwide selling its signature Kentucky Fried Chicken. McDonald's Corp., the world's largest restaurant chain, opened its first outlet in Malaysia in 1982 and has 158 restaurants, its Web site said.

Salad

Last year, KFC started selling the Garden Salad to cater to a more health-conscious public because "consumers are becoming increasingly aware of the nutritional value and importance of greens.'' KFC budgeted 1 million ringgit to promote the salad, its Web site said. KFC Deputy General Manager of Public Relations Rosniza Baharum declined to comment. Fast food isn't the only culprit. Traditional Malaysian dishes such as nasi lemak are also high in fat. A plate of nasi lemak, a popular breakfast dish of rice cooked in coconut milk, can contain 400 calories and falls in the same "medium'' calorie-content category as cheeseburgers and hotdogs, according to the Nutrition Society of Malaysia's Web site. A meal of three pieces of fried chicken with coleslaw, mashed potato, French fries and a bun contains more than 600 calories. An average adult needs 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day, said Abdul Fahmi A Karim, a surgeon at the Pantai Medical Centre in Kuala Lumpur, who treats obese patients.

'Oil and Fat'

"Our food is very rich in oil and fat,'' he said. A 2004 survey of more than 16,000 Malaysians by Universiti Putra Malaysia, the Ministry of Health and other universities showed that of the three main ethnic groups in the country, more than 13 percent of the country's Malay and Indian population are obese, compared with 8.4 percent of Chinese. About 12 percent of Malaysians aged 18 and above were obese in 2004, compared with 4.4 percent in 1996, said Rampal, who led the 2004 survey and calls obesity a "pandemic.'' Help is at hand for overweight patients. Surgeon Abdul Fahmi performs laproscopic adjustable gastric banding surgery, which places a band around the stomach to restrict food intake. The procedure costs as much as 35,000 ringgit. Malaysians are "non-stop eaters,'' Abdul Fahmi said. "If we don't move in now and start treating them, we're going to end up with problems later on.''