Chinese Obesity Epidemic?
It seems that 30% of Chinese are now overweight or obese. (In 2004, 58.8% of Canadians were overweight or obese) This, to me at least, shows that simply being Chinese or living in China has nothing to do with health, or at least healthy body weight. I do take issue with the article’s statement that Chinese people are thin because of the poverty due to Mao’s policies, implying that the Chinese people are malnourished and would be fat if they weren’t poor. I don’t associate their obesity with prosperity — I believe it’s the result of the availability of North American-style foods and the younger Chinese people’s associating prosperity with an American lifestyle.
To be sure, I recall that the Chinese culture has associated fat with prosperity in the past, since only rich people could afford to be fat, and that this idea may still be held by many. I suppose that the only way to determine the North American influence on this weight of Chinese people would be to determine whether the population is growing fat on American food or Chinese food.
But of course, the other side of the coin is probably an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. To combat childhood obesity, they were instituting mandatory dancing over there in 2007.
By the way, a new word has been invented: “globesity“.
(Full disclosure: I need to lose seven-to-ten pounds and drastically reduce sugars and cholesterol from my (mostly North American) diet. Eat better exercise more. Yessirree.)