Friday, September 2, 2011
New Beijing fat camp sees Chinese of all ages battling the bulge
New Beijing fat camp sees Chinese of all ages battling the bulge
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BEIJING: On the grounds of the Bodyworks weight loss campus in Beijing, 30 tubby men and women sweat profusely, gasping for air as they pound the treadmills in an exercise room.
They represent a shocking new statistic in the world’s most populous country. According to estimates, a third of China’s population – some 429 million are overweight or obese, prime candidates for heart disease and diabetes.
It is growing fatter faster than any developing nation except Mexico, with grave implications for the work force and economic growth in the world’s second biggest economy.
At the Bodyworks campus, they range in age from 7 to 55 and come from across China. Each pays 30,000 yuan ($4,696) for the six-week program.
“For the first two to three weeks, it was especially hard. I cried on the phone to my parents and told my father, ‘I can’t make it,’” said Zhang Fang, a 28-year-old employee with China Unicom from northern Shanxi province.
“My mom said: ‘If you don’t continue, you’re done. You need your health.’”
When Zhang joined the camp, she weighed 150 kg, had high blood pressure and had trouble breathing when she walked. She’s lost 50 kg in one year.
Though most Chinese think a chubby child is a healthy child, society can be less tolerant of overweight adults, who complain over not finding jobs.
“I want to give people a good impression when I go for interviews,” said Zheng Xiaojie, a 22-year-old university student from far-western Xinjiang, who has lost over 5 kg in seven weeks. “People feel more comfortable about thinner people.”
Obesity is most acute in China’s biggest urban cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, where people enjoy higher incomes, eat richer foods and lead more sedentary lifestyles.
“Urban China got richer. It’s just gone out and bought itself more food and bought itself cars and couches to sit on while watching TV,” Paul French, co-author ‘Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation,’ told Reuters.
Mu Ge, the sales manager at Bodyworks, said the most glaring difference between China and other countries “is that the rich people in China are all extremely fat … [whereas] in other countries, the wealthy are all very thin and beautiful.”
“In the U.K., only the poor people will eat junk food, and will therefore be fat,” Mu said. “In China, it’s the opposite. The more money you have, the fatter you are. It’s almost as if it’s proof that living standards have improved.”
Ding Zongyi, a professor at the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, who has been studying obesity in China for the past 30 years, said the obesity rate has jumped 158 percent since 1996 to 2006 and is set to rise further.
Even the most conservative assumptions have the rate of change in overweight and obesity in China doubling over the next two decades, Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, wrote in the July/August 2008 issue of the journal Health Affairs.
Health experts say that the speed with which China is putting on weight is alarming.
“In America and Europe, they had to go through the whole process of inventing supermarkets and processed food,” French, the writer, said. “It took stages in the West. The Chinese didn’t have to invent the Mars bar. It was given McDonald’s, KFC and Wal-Mart.”
Popkin said in emailed comments that more fried food, consumption of food from animal sources, sugared drinks and too few vegetables have contributed to China’s expanding girth.
Although the prevalence of fast food is a major culprit, extra-high amounts of salt, sugar and oil in Chinese cooking is another factor contributing to the sharp rise in obesity.
In China, the economic costs of obesity are huge, Popkin said. An increasingly obese population poses economic problems in terms of treatment costs, paid sick leave, loss of productivity, disability and premature death.
The indirect effect of obesity and obesity-related dietary and physical activity patterns was 3.58 percent of GDP in 2000 and was projected to reach 8.73 percent in 2025, Popkin wrote.
Ding said no action is ever taken by the government to address the problem.
They represent a shocking new statistic in the world’s most populous country. According to estimates, a third of China’s population – some 429 million are overweight or obese, prime candidates for heart disease and diabetes.
It is growing fatter faster than any developing nation except Mexico, with grave implications for the work force and economic growth in the world’s second biggest economy.
At the Bodyworks campus, they range in age from 7 to 55 and come from across China. Each pays 30,000 yuan ($4,696) for the six-week program.
“For the first two to three weeks, it was especially hard. I cried on the phone to my parents and told my father, ‘I can’t make it,’” said Zhang Fang, a 28-year-old employee with China Unicom from northern Shanxi province.
“My mom said: ‘If you don’t continue, you’re done. You need your health.’”
When Zhang joined the camp, she weighed 150 kg, had high blood pressure and had trouble breathing when she walked. She’s lost 50 kg in one year.
Though most Chinese think a chubby child is a healthy child, society can be less tolerant of overweight adults, who complain over not finding jobs.
“I want to give people a good impression when I go for interviews,” said Zheng Xiaojie, a 22-year-old university student from far-western Xinjiang, who has lost over 5 kg in seven weeks. “People feel more comfortable about thinner people.”
Obesity is most acute in China’s biggest urban cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, where people enjoy higher incomes, eat richer foods and lead more sedentary lifestyles.
“Urban China got richer. It’s just gone out and bought itself more food and bought itself cars and couches to sit on while watching TV,” Paul French, co-author ‘Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation,’ told Reuters.
Mu Ge, the sales manager at Bodyworks, said the most glaring difference between China and other countries “is that the rich people in China are all extremely fat … [whereas] in other countries, the wealthy are all very thin and beautiful.”
“In the U.K., only the poor people will eat junk food, and will therefore be fat,” Mu said. “In China, it’s the opposite. The more money you have, the fatter you are. It’s almost as if it’s proof that living standards have improved.”
Ding Zongyi, a professor at the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, who has been studying obesity in China for the past 30 years, said the obesity rate has jumped 158 percent since 1996 to 2006 and is set to rise further.
Even the most conservative assumptions have the rate of change in overweight and obesity in China doubling over the next two decades, Barry Popkin, professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina, wrote in the July/August 2008 issue of the journal Health Affairs.
Health experts say that the speed with which China is putting on weight is alarming.
“In America and Europe, they had to go through the whole process of inventing supermarkets and processed food,” French, the writer, said. “It took stages in the West. The Chinese didn’t have to invent the Mars bar. It was given McDonald’s, KFC and Wal-Mart.”
Popkin said in emailed comments that more fried food, consumption of food from animal sources, sugared drinks and too few vegetables have contributed to China’s expanding girth.
Although the prevalence of fast food is a major culprit, extra-high amounts of salt, sugar and oil in Chinese cooking is another factor contributing to the sharp rise in obesity.
In China, the economic costs of obesity are huge, Popkin said. An increasingly obese population poses economic problems in terms of treatment costs, paid sick leave, loss of productivity, disability and premature death.
The indirect effect of obesity and obesity-related dietary and physical activity patterns was 3.58 percent of GDP in 2000 and was projected to reach 8.73 percent in 2025, Popkin wrote.
Ding said no action is ever taken by the government to address the problem.
Read more: http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Culture/Lifestyle/2011/Sep-02/147678-new-beijing-fat-camp-sees-chinese-of-all-ages-battling-the-bulge.ashx#ixzz1Wlv1HWzj
(The Daily Star :: Lebanon News :: http://www.dailystar.com.lb)
Discussion Questions:
1. Globalization is usually viewed as a positive process, but the spread of American fast food chains is certainly negative and has affected, among other countries, Mexico and China. Would you blame the large number of obese Chinese (now 1.5 times the entire United States population) entirely on the "Americanization of China" and are there ANY potential benefits to a more Westernized diet?
2. As nations like China become more developed, especially in their urban centers, and acquire more multinational food companies, what could be done to prevent the invasion of the fast food system that can so radically change the diet and cripple the health of millions of people?
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