Has China now had a gutful?
- Source: Global Times
- [10:43 July 23 2010]
- Comments
The cover of Fat China. Photo: Courtesy of Crabbe and French
By Nick Muzyczka
"China has entered the era of obesity." This quote from Ji Chengye, of the China Preventive Medicine Association, is the opening of a new book by Paul French and Matthew Crabbe. Fat China is an absorbing work by two writers who have spent years researching and writing about pressing China-related issues.
"The book itself took about a year to write, but the research on the changes in China's diet in the book is the culmination of 12 years of constant study of food and drink consumption across China that we undertook as part of our work at Access Asia, an independent provider of China-based market research and business consultation service," French said.
Although obesity is a much discussed topic in the West, it is not yet widely scrutinized in China. Historically it was malnutrition that dominated food debates in China. The rapid development over the last 20 or so years has profoundly affected Chinese lifestyles and in many ways has reversed the situation. China is now getting fat; and quickly.
This book explains how food became cheap for many urban residents in the recent past. Availability and product ranges increased dramatically, while local wet markets went into decline. There are now more prepared, processed and high-fat and high-sugar foods than ever before. China is heading into a situation Dr Henk Bekedam, former WHO Chief China representative in Beijing, describes as "more of a threat than avian flu and much more difficult to treat."
Breadth of analysis
This book is especially impressive in terms of the breadth of its analysis. Readers get a sense of how obesity issues connect into many other parts of life, including urbanization and suburban spread. Some detailed examples include how urban parks often prohibit exercise, or how the intense pressure to succeed academically at school has reduced the time for sport on the curriculum.
The analysis even stretches to interior design: "The typical design of flats and apartments in China's cities has further encouraged a lifestyle of convenience foods and/or eating out. Most flats are too small to make live-in kitchens practical or feasible; even in the large edge-of-town villas built for the newly rich, kitchen areas are often ridiculously small," reads a passage from a chapter entitled "Fat City - Obesity and Urbanization."
The authors' long-term connection with Shanghai produces some interesting local case studies. Raffles City is given as an example of the impact of new development trends on traditional cuisine; here we have a huge mall with almost no Chinese food available, but all the burgers, hot dogs and ice cream you want.
Xintiandi also gets a mention: "Its website proclaims 'Xintiandi is the city's living room, a place to unwind and relax after a long day ...' However, bicycles are banned and anyone straying into the area with a bicycle will have it confiscated. Security guards roam the complex and there is not a single, solitary seat a member of the public can 'unwind and relax' on without purchasing or consuming something."
Fat China's prose is extremely clear and readable. The introduction to the book could perhaps have been a little shorter and less crammed with statistics. After this, however, the work flows with a natural, easy argumentation, unfolding with a pleasing balance of background information, interesting digressions, specific insights and well-researched raw data.
Statistics permeate the book and range from deeply enlightening to plain weird.
Did you know, for example, that China's total crop yield grew in volume by 67 percent between 1990 and 2006? Or that China has only 5 percent of the world's available arable land from which to feed about one-sixth of the world's population? Or that Western companies found a profitable niche exporting their discarded poultry claws to China, as Chinese ate all the chicken feet available in China and demand outstripped local supply?
