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Obesity 'Explosion' In Young Rural Chinese A Result Of Socioeconomic Changes, Study Warns (bbc.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BBC: Obesity has rapidly increased in young rural Chinese, a study has warned, because of socioeconomic changes. Researchers found 17% of boys and 9% of girls under the age of 19 were obese in 2014, up from 1% for each in 1985. The 29-year study, published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology, involved nearly 28,000 students in Shandong province. The study said China's rapid socioeconomic and nutritional transition has led to an increase in energy intake and a decrease in physical activity. The data was taken from six government surveys of rural school children in Shandong aged between seven and 18. The percentage of overweight children has also grown from 0.7% to 16.4% for boys and from 1.5% to nearly 14% for girls, the study said. "It is the worst explosion of childhood and adolescent obesity that I have ever seen," Joep Perk from the European Society of Cardiology told AFP news agency.

13 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Rice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    They've eaten a lot of rice for centuries. It's not the rice. It's the increase in meat, dairy and processed foods - they want to eat like Westerners.

  2. Obesity explosion eh? by Maritz · · Score: 4, Funny

    Ew...

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    1. Re:Obesity explosion eh? by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Obesity explosion is nothing new, Monty Python did it years ago.

  3. Re: Rice by ravenshrike · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Mainly the increase in processed foods. Meat and dairy without the massive increase in liver-processed sugars and extremely calorie dense snacks wouldn't cause nearly as much obesity.

  4. well by sociocapitalist · · Score: 3

    Calorie poor countries tend to have relatively wealthy people who are overweight because they can be and poor people can't be.

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  5. Re: Rice by Salgak1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The real key here is the decrease in activity. Farmers typically eat diets rich in meats and dairy ( processed or not) , and yet stay thin. Because they burn those calories and convert the protein into muscle.

    Processed foods may be a contributing cause,but the basic cause of obesity remains the same: eat more calories than you burn, and you'll gain weight. . .

  6. Re: Rice by 110010001000 · · Score: 5, Funny

    No. They just have a glandular problem and/or are big boned. Nothing to do with overeating.

  7. Re: Rice by drinkypoo · · Score: 4, Informative

    Thermodynamics is "ignorant shit"??

    This is not simple thermodynamics, and if you think it is, you're a goddamned idiot. It's a wonder you can even find Slashdot. Who created the bookmark on your desktop for you?

    Eating food in excess of needs does NOT cause weight gain ???

    Moving the goalposts, the sure sign of a stupid fuckhead. The claim was "eat more calories than you burn, and you'll gain weight" and that is a bunch of ignorant cockery. For one thing, how well you chew your food dramatically affects digestion, and you can only metabolize what you can digest.

    The fact is that the food intake of the average Chinese has gone more towards rapidly digestible carbohydrates, just as it has done for the whole world. These are basically the worst thing in the world when it comes to weight gain. Not all "calories" are created equal, and suggesting that they are outright proves that you have no idea what you are on about.

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  8. The Cure by JimSadler · · Score: 4, Interesting

    China is less restrained in problem solving than we are. I hate to think just what they might do if obesity officially becomes a problem. Somehow i picture youth being herded into fat camps where they labor and are forced to get into slender shapes. They obviously keep their military people in a very slim form by simply keeping them hungry and requiring exercise.

  9. Communism cures obesity by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Communism is the best cure we have today for obesity. Just ask the North Koreans, or apparently the Chinese kids of 1985.

  10. Re:Is McDonalds available there now? by operagost · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Do you even know if McDonalds is present in RURAL areas of China? Last I looked, they were in the cities. And I'd like to see your figures on the "Bad Sodas" usage. What are the "Good Sodas"? If you don't actually have any of this data (hint: you don't), then I suggest actually reading the study conveniently linked to this story. One point is that the study, for whatever reason, used a stricter BMI classification than the WHO. Apparently, the researchers thought they were smarter than the rest of the world. Sound familiar?

    Speaking of "Bullshit people"... yeesh. Your post reads like the rambling of some soccer mom on Gwyneth Paltrow's facebook page.

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  11. you are partially correct.... by gosand · · Score: 5, Informative

    It is a glandular problem, their glands are being over worked. People are eating more and more foods that put the body through the 'hormone roller coaster' where their blood sugar spikes and falls. Increased carbs and sugars elevate insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbs. Your body gets physically addicted to this, which makes you crave it more and the problem only gets worse.

    Being fat is not a problem of overeating, calorie in/out, or laziness. It is due to an unbalance in the body's ability to regulate fat storage which is controlled by hormones. (primarily insulin - see roller coaster) People aren't overweight because they eat a lot - they eat a lot because they are overweight! The more fat someone has, the hungrier they will be and the less energy they will have to exercise.

    Ever wonder how someone with a true glandular malfunction can grow bigger and bigger no matter what they eat? Why kids shoot up and grow rapidly at a certain age? Hormones run the show.

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  12. Re: Rice by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Having lost just shy of over a hundred pounds over the past three years, I have a perspective on "overeating".

    The stereotype is some greedy, willpower-less person stuffing his face with mounds of food, but really gorging has very little to do with it. It's a very subtle difference between having calorie intake and output in equilibrium, and gaining or losing weight. In the thirty or so years between when I reached my current height and when I reached my maximum weight, I gained 120 pounds. That works out to nearly exactly 5 grams of weight gain per day -- about the weight of a US nickel. Now some of that weight gain was muscle -- I was active in sports all the way up to the point where I hit my maximum weight. I won't bore you with the calculations, but my lean body weight increased by about 45 pounds while I added 75 pounds of fat. But let's assume all of that was fat. How many calories in excess of equilibrium would you have to eat to gain 5 grams of fat? About 45 calories. In comparison a single slice of dry, white bread has about 75 calories. My "overeating" was the equivalent of an extra half an apple a day, every day for thirty years.

    It's very easy to gain weight. You don't have to be a pig to do it. Conversely, I have found it's very easy to lose weight. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that's the case. I believe anyone can do it, if they understand how their body works. I think the problem is that people believe the body has a kind of wisdom of its own; in my experience that's rubbish. Your body is a machine; a machine built for killing mammoths that's currently spending its days sitting in a chair churning out code. Of course it's not going to work right.

    So screw all that "trust your body's wisdom" nonsense. Your body is dumb. It can't keep track of how much it has eaten; your stomach basically has three fullness settings: eat something right away, I could eat a little more, and I'm going to barf I'm so full. The rest of satiety is your dumb reptilian brain at work. Studies show that if you serve yourself cereal out of a larger box, you'll take a larger serving than if you serve yourself cereal out of a small box, and feel equally full either way. Same thing if you eat off a big plate. Smaller plates (and utensils) mean you feel full after eating less. Chewing more makes you think you've eaten more. Because you're an idiot, at least most of you (everything from your cortex down) is. Stop expecting your body to act reasonably. It can't.

    Imagine you're in a space capsule. You've been trained to watch a gauge, and to manipulate a lever so that the gauge stays in a certain narrow range because if it goes out of that range the capsule fails. You'd watch that gauge like a hawk because if the capsule fails, you die. That capsule is your body, and if it fails, you die. So what I do is I (a) wear an activity monitor (b) measure/weigh everything that I am about to eat and log it in a calorie counting app religiously, (c) aim to maintain about a 500 calories deficit every day, and (d) weigh myself and take a body fat measurement every day. That's pretty much it. Oh, there's tricks you can play on your reptilian brain to make achieving calorie deficit easier (small plates, big volume/chewy food; getting choosier about what I eat because I don't get to eat without thinking, putting a timer on to pace myself to no more than 25 calories/min). But those things are peripheral. Measurement is central. You can't get the machine to do what you want unless you measure its inputs and outputs. It's best to maintain your intake and output goals separately, by the way -- that is don't automatically up your calorie intake because you've exercised, but if you've burned 5000 calories in a day (as I did recently) you're going to be hungrier than usual.

    Now a to why Chinese kids are getting fat, you need evidence to answer a question like that, but if I were to conjecture I'd look at the availability of cheap, tasty, convenience foods engineered to disappear into your bo

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