1.4 billion wide waists

More and more people in China are eating burgers, pizza, cakes, processed foods, donuts, pastas and just about every other Western (fast) culinary invention. All that stuff, as it turns out, is going straight to waistlines across the nation, clogging arteries and creating a generation of obese children.
 
Health problems directly associated with these new eating habits could have a considerable effect on not just the lifestyles of 1.4 billion people, but on health care costs, which are likely to be astronomical.
 
The silver lining has nothing to do with health, but with economic growth. Rising obesity rates may underline the reality that China’s much-anticipated consumer class has arrived.
 
With no shortage of data, Paul French and Matthew Crabbe drive the point home in Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation. They bring an impressive amount of data to support a relatively simple premise.
 
Familiar symptoms
 
China is growing wealthier and more urban. In turn, people are cash-richer but time-poorer. One result is less time to prepare healthy meals and more reliance on unhealthy fast food featuring sugar and plenty of fat. In essence, rising obesity rates across China are a symptom of growing wealth as better white-collar jobs and the process of urbanization create more sedentary lifestyles.
 
Fat China does not skimp on numbers. It includes more statistics than a reasonable person can realistically be expected to swallow in any one sitting. Study after study is carefully dug up, researched, quoted, sourced and put in context. This makes it hard to argue the authors’ point.
 
A little more of a personal touch would have helped to get through a book that, ultimately, reads more like a report from a consultancy than a piece of literature. But then, that’s what it is: French and Crabbe founded research firm Access Asia, known for its analysis of retail and consumer trends in China.
 
Here, their analysis is backed by plenty of experience, which comes through in the sheer number of examples they provide to back up and explain their various points: from changes in consumer spending patterns to new diet choices and the impact on health care provision.
 
The spread of lifestyle ailments such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease in China has been well documented. French and Crabbe make the point abundantly clear for those who were not paying attention before, but their focus is on the underlying trends that are leading to the increase.
 
Middle class blight
 
For now, obesity and associated health problems remain a serious issue among the middle class, a small segment of the population endemic to the cities that is growing as fast as the market for larger underwear. Obesity across the entire population remains relatively low at less than 5%. In cities, however, the figure can jump to more than 20%.
 
As the authors point out, "this is a key middle-class issue – it is the middle class that are getting fat, the middle class that is most radically changing its traditional diet." Well, yes.
 
There are a few interesting side effects to this change in diet. For one, clothing manufacturers are reporting higher sales in bigger garments. Bra manufacturers, for example, are selling cup sizes that would have been virtually unheard of a decade ago.
 
Another side effect, one perhaps more worrying than interesting, is the pressure obesity is likely to put on China’s nascent universal health care system if not tackled now.
 
But the new generation of Chinese – those growing up in the cities, often under the care of grandparents more likely to spoil them than ensure healthy eating habits – are unlikely to be given a choice.
 
As the authors note: "China’s children find themselves faced with a confusing and conflicting image of what they should look like."
 
On the one hand, every family wants nicely rotund and plump babies. On the other, teenagers are confronted with images of slim and trim bodies, but forced into lifestyles that encourage anything but.
 
"In this sense, they are perhaps caught in a similar dilemma to kids the world over in developed urban societies," the authors note.
 
Alfred Romann