More than half of Chinese adults are now considered overweight, a study conducted by the country’s National Health Commission revealed on Wednesday. Obesity rates among Chinese adults have also more than doubled in less than two decades, from 7.1% in 2002 to 16.4% this year.
According to the report, 50.7% of Chinese adults are overweight, including those who are obese. In a country of 1.4 billion, that amounts to more than half a billion people – more than the entire population of the United States.
It is a sharp increase in the past two decades. In 2002, 29.9% of Chinese adults were overweight, including obese. In 2012, that number rose to 42%, according to previous reports released by Chinese health authorities.
“The residents of our country face a serious problem of overweight and obesity. The rates of overweight and obesity among residents in urban and rural areas and in all age groups are constantly increasing,” said Li Bin, deputy director of the National Commission on Health, news conference on Wednesday.
This is partly due to major changes in diet and eating habits caused by the country’s rapid economic growth. During the 1950s and 60s, hunger caused about 45 million Chinese to starve to death. And until 1993, people had to use food stamps distributed by the government to obtain staple foods like rice, oil, eggs and meat.
The days of food shortages are long gone. Now, the Chinese are free to eat basically as they like, and the country’s new wealth has brought increasingly nutritious, calorie-rich foods to the dinner table.
The increase in purchasing power has also given rise to the problem of food waste, which Chinese President Xi Jinping has called “shocking and distressing”. On Tuesday, a bill on the prevention of food waste was submitted to the country’s national legislature.
The increase in overweight and obesity rates represents an additional burden on public health. Excessive weight increases the risk of serious illness and health conditions, including hypertension, diabetes, coronary heart disease and stroke, says the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Rates of overweight and obesity in China have been rising rapidly, with high prevalence and affecting all groups of the population. This poses enormous challenges,” said Zhao Wenhua, chief nutritionist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the World Health Organization, at least 4 million people die each year from overweight or obesity.
Worldwide, obesity is also on the rise, almost tripling since 1975, according to the WHO. In 2016, 39% of adults worldwide – or more than 1.9 billion people – were overweight, including more than 650 million obese.
In the United States, 71.6% of adults were classified as overweight, including obese, between 2015 and 2016, according to the CDC.
But China is more difficult to measure than global standards. The WHO considers a body mass index (BMI) – a relationship between weight and height – above 25 as being overweight and more than 30 obese. In China, a BMI greater than 24 is considered overweight and over 28 is obese.
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