You read the title correctly. In a study published in the American Journal of Human Biology, researchers studied the sad irony of obesity in developing food-starved nations. "In the same household, you can have a chubby kid and a starving kid," , the lead researcher, stated.

He argues that obesity in developing nations is a result of the body's attempts to cope with childhood malnourishment. The phenomena is similar to yo-yo dieting, where dieters who have deprived themselves gain weight at faster rates than non-dieters when they begin eating normally again.

Under normal nutritional conditions, humans only absorb about 80 percent of the nutrients from the food they eat, and the rest of the nutrients pass through the body. But when deprived of nourishment, the body becomes a super efficient machine, Frisancho said, pulling all the nutrients from the food for energy. Further, because humans need a certain percentage of body fat reserves to stay alive and because it takes more work for the body to burn fat than carbohydrate, the body in starvation mode learns to burn carbohydrate for energy and to store fat, rather than to use the energy for growth.

I have never been a fan of induction stages of dieting, which are often prolonged beyond the first two weeks of any diet. As demonstrated in this article, continuous restriction of carbohydrates will only result in rebound weight gain. That's why it's so important to choose the RIGHT carbs to eat and to maintain a healthy ratio of about 35% of your diet as high fiber, low glycemic carbs if you want to prevent rebound weight gain when aiming for a maintenace, healthy diet.

Reduced rate of fat oxidation: a metabolic pathway to obesity in the developing nations,

Am J Hum Biol. 2003 Jul-Aug;15(4):522-32.