Has an increasingly fatter China fallen into the diet trap?
The living standards in China are improving steadily, but it seems to be having a rather negative effect on people’s waistlines.
The weight gain has been rapid, happening in just a few decades. Our Beijing correspondent John Artman says that when it comes to managing body weight, the Chinese seem to prefer quick fixes to more permanent solutions.
Data from 2011 shows that one in every four people is currently overweight in China. What’s the situation in Beijing? Have you noticed that there are more overweight people on the streets than in the past?
It’s hard for me to say from my own experience, I’ve lived here for almost five years, but that’s actually a fairly short period of time. When I first came here I wasn’t really paying attention, but these days I think that there are quite a few overweight people here in Beijing and in the other bigger cities as well, though not so much in smaller places.
From the people that I’ve talked to, and the research that I’ve done, it is very obvious that weight is becoming a big problem in China. As people move from the countryside to the cities and become urban residents, they almost immediately gain weight.
In most cases this is a good thing, because it means that their nutritional needs are being met more easily. They’re able to get higher quality food here in the city; it’s much more readily available. The problem is that so-called lifestyle diseases will become a much bigger issue, especially for the medical care system.
Experts are worried about the negative effect that the growing numbers of overweight people will have on the nation’s health. How is the situation being handled
Weight gain is not something the Chinese people talk about very often. The people who are in charge of medical care policy are obviously very aware of the weight problem, but there are even bigger issues in China. The medical care system as it stands right now isn’t fully developed. So the issue is of course how is the medical care system going to handle this, but what you’ll find in many cases is that they won’t handle it. I don’t mean that people aren’t going to be taken care of, rather than they are going to have to take care of themselves.
One of the things that a lot of people forget or at least don’t know about China is that yes, it technically is a socialist system, but the way it plays out half the time is that the people actually end up paying a lot for their own treatment. So certain basic medical services are going to be covered by public insurance. But as we look at lifestyle diseases and more expensive medication, what we’ll be seeing is that people themselves are responsible for making sure that they are being treated.
A report issued by the Ministry of Health in August found that almost 84 percent of adults in China never exercise. What do you think about this, is there really a lack of interest in exercise? Is it a popular weight loss method?
You have to remember that in China exercise in general is a new thing. Certainly there is tai chi, kung fu and other various kinds of martial arts/medical practices (if you want to call them that) that do exist, but they’re not very popular. Plus they are very specialized kinds of activities.
What’s so funny about this is that these days in most cases it’s older people who practice tai chi. And they’re not practicing it because they’re worried about their weight, it’s just part of what they do to stay healthy. Tai chi is good for older people because it’s very low impact and the movements are slow.
In China, the amount of processed food that contains sugars, fats and salt has basically skyrocketed over the last 20 or so years. If you couple that with a culture that doesn’t really have exercise or even athletics in its history or tradition, it kind of makes sense that you’re going to see people getting fatter because of what they eat and also because of what they do. Or in this case, don’t do.
I read that one of the reasons why the Chinese don’t exercise that much is the fact that gyms and exercise venues are hard to find.
Back in the States, if I would be concerned about my weight, I would go to a gym, maybe go running outside or find a pool to go swimming. But in China, a lot of people don’t have that many opportunities to go to a gym. If you talk about gym memberships and the availability of swimming pools, either they don’t exist or if they do exist they’re going to be expensive and in more affluent areas. There certainly is exercise equipment at Chinese parks, but the common perception is that those are meant for old people. So because of that, it makes sense that most Chinese people don't get exercise.
In addition, many Chinese people simply don't have the time to exercise. If they’re living in a big city, the average time it takes to commute is anywhere between 1.5 hours to 3 hours. So by the time you get home from work it’s already 8 or 9 o’clock, you’re really exhausted and exercise is the last thing you’re going to be thinking about.
In the West, a lot of people use fitness videos and exercise at home instead of going to the gym. Would an average Chinese person pick up a fitness video and try to get in shape?
I can’t remember ever seeing an exercise video at a DVD store. The internet being what it is, I’m quite sure that there probably are things like that available through one of the many online video platforms.
I think what happens in the end is that diet gets a lot more focus than exercise. For example, if you turn on the TV at any given moment, most likely there is going to be some kind of health-related program being broadcasted. It might be about healthier ways of cooking your food, but it will lean more towards traditional Chinese medicine.
There are definitely quite a few diet books and programs around that as is it turns out have nothing to do with exercise whatsoever. Those are the types of shows that would have been shut down very quickly in the West. For example, they guarantee that you can lose 5 kilograms in 30 days without having to take any medicine or shots. Who knows how they’re actually doing it. So, exercise doesn’t get that much focus in China, dieting is prevalent as a kind of quick fix, along with instant gratification diet schemes or scams.
Are there any kinds of popular diets in China? Like in the West, the current hit is the low-carb diet.
There are no popular diets. In China, it’s usually girls who are drawn to diets, because the average Chinese person is actually quite skinny anyway. The beauty ideal for Chinese girls is to be quite skinny, and so a lot of them are dieting. Usually what happens is that the girls just say they're not going to eat, or they eat one cucumber or they will say to themselves “Ok, I’m not going to eat dinner.” I don’t think that there’s a diet program that’s really popular, nothing like the South Beach Diet or the Atkins Diet or the low-carb diet, whatever you want to call it. A lot of it is just what the Chinese would call “common sense dieting,” and what I would call uninformed dieting.
In the West, many people believe the hype that the best way to get thin is to eat low-fat foods. Are there lots of low-fat products in Chinese shops, and do people buy them?
No, I’ve never seen any low-fat products in China or heard any Chinese person talking about low-fat products. Certainly we do have diet sodas in China, those kinds of things seem to be fairly popular. But other than that I can’t recall the last time I saw any kind of product besides a soda that was advertising itself as low-fat or low-sugar.
What about extreme measures to get rid of body fat, are such methods as liposuction and gastric bypass becoming popular?
Cosmetic surgery in general is becoming much more popular in China, and so is liposuction. The Chinese seem to be learning it from their neighbors. For example if you look at South Korea, they have a reputation for doing a lot of cosmetic surgery. And since China is taking after its neighbors, we are now seeing a lot more plastic surgery here.
Along with getting an extra fold on your eye removed or getting your nose whittled down a little bit or getting higher cheek bones, liposuction is certainly becoming much more of an option for a lot of people. That being said, it’s important to remember that this stuff is really expensive in China. Cosmetic surgery in the US isn’t cheap, but it’s definitely going to be more expensive here in China.
So plastic surgery is more for the middle to upper classes who have enough money and who are willing to pay for it. It’s not like liposuction or cosmetic surgery is available for everyone and everyone is doing it, but certainly among the people that can afford it, it is becoming much more prevalent.
I’ve heard that there is a belief in China that “a fat child is a healthy child.” Recent data shows that about 20 percent of Chinese children are in fact overweight. What’s causing this?
One of the most distressing things for me as a parent is to see how many Chinese grandparents feed their grandchildren crap. It’s literally crap – just sweet yogurts, candies, cookies and crackers – things with basically no nutritional value, but high in sugar, fats and salt.
So we have kids growing up who are used to eating processed foods. I do eat processed foods and I’m not necessarily outside of this. But I try not to eat processed foods and I certainly don’t let my kids eat as much, while a lot of Chinese parents do. So if they’re serious about changing the situation, then there needs to be a lot more education about what people should eat.
Do you think China will manage to tackle the weight gain problem or will it soon become one of the fattest countries in the world?
There’s no way they can manage it. At this point there’s so much processed food that’s available. It’s ridiculous how much processed food people eat without realizing how little nutrition there is in it. This is distressing, because if you’re a busy white collar worker, most likely you’re not going to have time to eat breakfast at home. It is also likely you’re not going to have very much time for lunch or dinner. So for breakfast you go to a street vendor and buy a fried egg pancake that’s been doused in corn oil or some kind of animal fat. For lunch you’re most likely going to be eating some greasy cheap noodles or just the instant noodles that you can get for two renminbi down at the convenience store. And the same thing for dinner – if it’s not some greasy oil covered fried thing from down the street, it’s going to be something from a cheap restaurant that’s just as unhealthy.
And we have to keep in mind that alcohol and cigarette consumption are also extremely high in China. While those things don’t necessarily cause people to be more overweight, they do worsen health problems associated with being overweight, such as cardiovascular problems, high blood pressure and so on. If we look at these trends, then unless there’s more education about these kinds of things, the situation will not get better
Data from 2011 shows that one in every four people is currently overweight in China. What’s the situation in Beijing? Have you noticed that there are more overweight people on the streets than in the past?
It’s hard for me to say from my own experience, I’ve lived here for almost five years, but that’s actually a fairly short period of time. When I first came here I wasn’t really paying attention, but these days I think that there are quite a few overweight people here in Beijing and in the other bigger cities as well, though not so much in smaller places.
From the people that I’ve talked to, and the research that I’ve done, it is very obvious that weight is becoming a big problem in China. As people move from the countryside to the cities and become urban residents, they almost immediately gain weight.
In most cases this is a good thing, because it means that their nutritional needs are being met more easily. They’re able to get higher quality food here in the city; it’s much more readily available. The problem is that so-called lifestyle diseases will become a much bigger issue, especially for the medical care system.
Experts are worried about the negative effect that the growing numbers of overweight people will have on the nation’s health. How is the situation being handled
Weight gain is not something the Chinese people talk about very often. The people who are in charge of medical care policy are obviously very aware of the weight problem, but there are even bigger issues in China. The medical care system as it stands right now isn’t fully developed. So the issue is of course how is the medical care system going to handle this, but what you’ll find in many cases is that they won’t handle it. I don’t mean that people aren’t going to be taken care of, rather than they are going to have to take care of themselves.
One of the things that a lot of people forget or at least don’t know about China is that yes, it technically is a socialist system, but the way it plays out half the time is that the people actually end up paying a lot for their own treatment. So certain basic medical services are going to be covered by public insurance. But as we look at lifestyle diseases and more expensive medication, what we’ll be seeing is that people themselves are responsible for making sure that they are being treated.
A report issued by the Ministry of Health in August found that almost 84 percent of adults in China never exercise. What do you think about this, is there really a lack of interest in exercise? Is it a popular weight loss method?
You have to remember that in China exercise in general is a new thing. Certainly there is tai chi, kung fu and other various kinds of martial arts/medical practices (if you want to call them that) that do exist, but they’re not very popular. Plus they are very specialized kinds of activities.
What’s so funny about this is that these days in most cases it’s older people who practice tai chi. And they’re not practicing it because they’re worried about their weight, it’s just part of what they do to stay healthy. Tai chi is good for older people because it’s very low impact and the movements are slow.
In China, the amount of processed food that contains sugars, fats and salt has basically skyrocketed over the last 20 or so years. If you couple that with a culture that doesn’t really have exercise or even athletics in its history or tradition, it kind of makes sense that you’re going to see people getting fatter because of what they eat and also because of what they do. Or in this case, don’t do.
I read that one of the reasons why the Chinese don’t exercise that much is the fact that gyms and exercise venues are hard to find.
Back in the States, if I would be concerned about my weight, I would go to a gym, maybe go running outside or find a pool to go swimming. But in China, a lot of people don’t have that many opportunities to go to a gym. If you talk about gym memberships and the availability of swimming pools, either they don’t exist or if they do exist they’re going to be expensive and in more affluent areas. There certainly is exercise equipment at Chinese parks, but the common perception is that those are meant for old people. So because of that, it makes sense that most Chinese people don't get exercise.
In addition, many Chinese people simply don't have the time to exercise. If they’re living in a big city, the average time it takes to commute is anywhere between 1.5 hours to 3 hours. So by the time you get home from work it’s already 8 or 9 o’clock, you’re really exhausted and exercise is the last thing you’re going to be thinking about.
In the West, a lot of people use fitness videos and exercise at home instead of going to the gym. Would an average Chinese person pick up a fitness video and try to get in shape?
I can’t remember ever seeing an exercise video at a DVD store. The internet being what it is, I’m quite sure that there probably are things like that available through one of the many online video platforms.
I think what happens in the end is that diet gets a lot more focus than exercise. For example, if you turn on the TV at any given moment, most likely there is going to be some kind of health-related program being broadcasted. It might be about healthier ways of cooking your food, but it will lean more towards traditional Chinese medicine.
There are definitely quite a few diet books and programs around that as is it turns out have nothing to do with exercise whatsoever. Those are the types of shows that would have been shut down very quickly in the West. For example, they guarantee that you can lose 5 kilograms in 30 days without having to take any medicine or shots. Who knows how they’re actually doing it. So, exercise doesn’t get that much focus in China, dieting is prevalent as a kind of quick fix, along with instant gratification diet schemes or scams.
Are there any kinds of popular diets in China? Like in the West, the current hit is the low-carb diet.
There are no popular diets. In China, it’s usually girls who are drawn to diets, because the average Chinese person is actually quite skinny anyway. The beauty ideal for Chinese girls is to be quite skinny, and so a lot of them are dieting. Usually what happens is that the girls just say they're not going to eat, or they eat one cucumber or they will say to themselves “Ok, I’m not going to eat dinner.” I don’t think that there’s a diet program that’s really popular, nothing like the South Beach Diet or the Atkins Diet or the low-carb diet, whatever you want to call it. A lot of it is just what the Chinese would call “common sense dieting,” and what I would call uninformed dieting.
In the West, many people believe the hype that the best way to get thin is to eat low-fat foods. Are there lots of low-fat products in Chinese shops, and do people buy them?
No, I’ve never seen any low-fat products in China or heard any Chinese person talking about low-fat products. Certainly we do have diet sodas in China, those kinds of things seem to be fairly popular. But other than that I can’t recall the last time I saw any kind of product besides a soda that was advertising itself as low-fat or low-sugar.
What about extreme measures to get rid of body fat, are such methods as liposuction and gastric bypass becoming popular?
Cosmetic surgery in general is becoming much more popular in China, and so is liposuction. The Chinese seem to be learning it from their neighbors. For example if you look at South Korea, they have a reputation for doing a lot of cosmetic surgery. And since China is taking after its neighbors, we are now seeing a lot more plastic surgery here.
Along with getting an extra fold on your eye removed or getting your nose whittled down a little bit or getting higher cheek bones, liposuction is certainly becoming much more of an option for a lot of people. That being said, it’s important to remember that this stuff is really expensive in China. Cosmetic surgery in the US isn’t cheap, but it’s definitely going to be more expensive here in China.
So plastic surgery is more for the middle to upper classes who have enough money and who are willing to pay for it. It’s not like liposuction or cosmetic surgery is available for everyone and everyone is doing it, but certainly among the people that can afford it, it is becoming much more prevalent.
I’ve heard that there is a belief in China that “a fat child is a healthy child.” Recent data shows that about 20 percent of Chinese children are in fact overweight. What’s causing this?
One of the most distressing things for me as a parent is to see how many Chinese grandparents feed their grandchildren crap. It’s literally crap – just sweet yogurts, candies, cookies and crackers – things with basically no nutritional value, but high in sugar, fats and salt.
So we have kids growing up who are used to eating processed foods. I do eat processed foods and I’m not necessarily outside of this. But I try not to eat processed foods and I certainly don’t let my kids eat as much, while a lot of Chinese parents do. So if they’re serious about changing the situation, then there needs to be a lot more education about what people should eat.
Do you think China will manage to tackle the weight gain problem or will it soon become one of the fattest countries in the world?
There’s no way they can manage it. At this point there’s so much processed food that’s available. It’s ridiculous how much processed food people eat without realizing how little nutrition there is in it. This is distressing, because if you’re a busy white collar worker, most likely you’re not going to have time to eat breakfast at home. It is also likely you’re not going to have very much time for lunch or dinner. So for breakfast you go to a street vendor and buy a fried egg pancake that’s been doused in corn oil or some kind of animal fat. For lunch you’re most likely going to be eating some greasy cheap noodles or just the instant noodles that you can get for two renminbi down at the convenience store. And the same thing for dinner – if it’s not some greasy oil covered fried thing from down the street, it’s going to be something from a cheap restaurant that’s just as unhealthy.
And we have to keep in mind that alcohol and cigarette consumption are also extremely high in China. While those things don’t necessarily cause people to be more overweight, they do worsen health problems associated with being overweight, such as cardiovascular problems, high blood pressure and so on. If we look at these trends, then unless there’s more education about these kinds of things, the situation will not get better
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