Behind the Scale: Roots of China's Obesity Problem

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Source: Financial Times
Simply walk into a residential area in Beijing and you will be blinded by the selection of fast food choices available. Then head to the grocery store and be amazed by how packaged food dominates the scene. It was thus not that surprising when it was announced that China’s obesity rate is rising faster than its GDP growth in 2015. However, the reasons behind Chinese people’s widening waistlines actually lie beyond what is displayed on the food shelves in the grocery stores; cultural, historical and social aspects have all played a part in this phenomenon.
 
First, the traditional Chinese perception of fatness plays a role in it. “富态” (futai), or the appearance of being wealthy, is always characterized by people of rounder shapes. Younger children, particularly, are only considered adorable when they are not slim, as characterized by the young girl in the China Dream campaign advertisements. 
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Source: Huffington Post
Another likely cause of the obesity crisis, and also the most important cause to me, may be a history somewhat forbidden: The Great Famine. If you ask any Chinese over age 60 about the late 1950s, it is very likely that they will address the horror of the Great Famine which led to the deaths of 36 million from 1958 to 1961.  Those three years of extreme starvation are memories that will be ingrained in the Chinese culture for many years to come. In this case, the fear of hunger can be much greater than the fear of being overweight. I still remember my uncle who lives in a rural area of Inner Mongolia telling me about the years of extreme hunger, during which he recalled “people eating people”. Nowadays, he is so proud of his round physique that he loves to show it to the neighbors as a display of his abundant lifestyle. In fact, a study has shown that adults who lived through the Great Famine tend to have higher BMIs and are more likely to develop diabetes as they become highly attracted to fatty foods later on in their lives.[1] The scientific reason behind this attraction is unknown, but one could infer that it is due to the lack of variation, or plainly the deprivation, of food during their younger years. In addition, due to the lack of nutrition from maternal bodies, infants born during or after the three-year period generally experience various forms of malnutrition that lead to higher chances of developing diabetes.
 
With many who have experienced the Great Famine now becoming grandparents and retired with ample time to be around their grandchildren, it is highly likely that they will be overfeeding the children due to fear that the grandkids will not have enough to eat and eventually experience what they went through. It is not ideal, but keeping the horrors and consequences in mind, I found it hard to blame those who had gone through starvation feeding their offspring excessively. In fact, I could still recall my own grandmother forcing me to gorge down massive portions of rice in fear that I would become hungry later in the day and experience the horror of starvation. “It is always better to have more than less.” She would also say, “How could anyone waste their food when there were food shortages not so long ago?” The memories from the three years of the Great Famine makes China unique in terms of reason for the rise in obesity, as overfeeding has become the older generation’s way of increasing the rates of survival for their children.
 
Inspecting China’s obesity rates, it is not hard for us to notice that teenagers usually have higher numbers.[2] This could be attributed directly to the One Child Policy and to China’s modern and traditional views of beauty. Ironically, the One Child Policy was placed in order to control the population as to limit mass poverty [3], yet now it is contributing to the rise of obesity and gluttony. With only one children per family, all the attention from family members would be focused on the single child since his or her birth. Owing to these over-caring attitudes, the child will very likely become “a Little Emperor” who is unable to accept “no” as an answer. Parents don’t have the heart to turn down the child’s request for additional snacks, leading to the overindulgence of calories and thus obesity.
 
The phenomenon is also more prevalent in males, and especially teenage boys [4], as firstly, males, in traditional Chinese terms, are still treasured more than females and thus fed more as the families place more hope, attention, and care on the boys instead of the girls; secondly, the prevailing perception of beauty revolves around slimness for women but not so much for men. The numerous diet advertisement around are often targeted towards females with few showing males as part of their presentations. It is no wonder then that the number of males over the healthy weight line is higher than that of females due to the influences of these advertisements, traditional values, and the side effects of the One Child Policy.
 
The highly stressful everyday life of an average Chinese also contributes to the obesity rate. A school-aged teenager is often burdened heavily with schoolwork and pressure from the family. A middle-class salaryman can stay late at the company everyday to fulfill or even surpass the manager’s demands in order to get a promotion. Although paychecks have risen, their free time has not. Once they are freed from study or work, they are faced from the few leisure hours which they then spend in traffic jams to get back home. At grocery stores, keeping the recent food poisoning scare in mind, they opt for packaged, high-calorie, food rather than fresh produce believing that the packaged ones are safer to ingest. Adding together high stress, lack of exercise, and excess calories, we have a perfect formula for obesity.
 
The consequences of the rise of obesity are not just suffered by the overweight individual. The number of Chinese diabetic children under 14 has almost tripled over the past 25 years [5]. With currently 92.3 million diabetics [6] and the number on the rise, China’s health care system will be heavily burdened if the waistlines continue to expand. Although the government has already implemented school nutrition programs and mandated exercise time for schools, there is still a long way to go. To defuse this ticking bomb requires much more than what is currently being done. Regulations in the food industry on labeling should be placed in addition to the implementation education programs on nutrition for new parents/grandparents. On halting the obesity crisis before it’s too late, China still has a long way to go in eliminating the after effects of the Great Famine, breaking down false beliefs from traditional values, and on enforcing food safety and healthy living styles for all in the nation.


References
[1] Kim, Seonghoon, Quheng Deng, Belton M. Fleisher, and Shi Li. "The Lasting Impact of Parental Early Life Malnutrition on Their Offspring: Evidence from the China Great Leap Forward Famine." World Development 54 (2014): 232-42. Web.
[2] Lau X. "Lazy lifestyle a weighty issue." Beijing Rev 47, 6 (2004): 28-9
[3] Anderson, Gordon, and Teng Wah Leo. "Child Poverty, Investment In Children And Generational Mobility: The Short And Long Term Wellbeing Of Children In Urban China After The One Child Policy."Review of Income and Wealth 55 (2009): 607-29. Web.
[4] "Global, Regional, and National Incidence, Prevalence, and Years Lived with Disability for 301 Acute and Chronic Diseases and Injuries in 188 Countries, 1990–2013: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2013." The Lancet 386.9995 (2015): 743-800. Web.
[5] French, Paul, and Matthew Crabbe. Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines Are Changing a Nation. London: Anthem, 2010. Print.
 [6] "China 'Catastrophe' Hits 114 Million as Diabetes Spreads."Bloomberg.com. Bloomberg, 3 Sept. 2013. Web. 15 Oct. 2015.

Hillary Song is a freshman at Duke University.