Phil Gramm Corrected

A while back, I made a snarky comment about a quote from Phil Gramm, a former Senator from Texas. 

Has anyone ever noticed that we live in the only country in the world where all the poor people are fat?" -- Phil Gramm, during his first Senate campaign

I'm not sure why, exactly, but the comment bothered me.  Today, I read in the New England Journal of Medicine (subscription required) that Mr. Gramm was wrong:

A Nutrition Paradox — Underweight and Obesity in Developing Countries
Benjamin Caballero, M.D., Ph.D.

[...] Among countries at an intermediate level of development (middle-income countries, with a per capita gross national product [GNP] of about $3,000 per year), overweight ranks fifth among the top 10 causes of disease burden — right below underweight. This is the same position held by overweight as a cause of disease burden in the developed world. [...]