With wealth comes fat, China finds

From the LA Times:

Reporting from Beijing — Tian Ning shuffled unsteadily across his room at a weight loss clinic in Beijing, not exactly looking like the picture of
health, but triumphant nonetheless.

In six months, Tian has gone from the unglamorous subject of a reality intervention television show called "Tian Weighs 462 Pounds, Beijing's Fattest Man," to a man eagerly
approaching his ideal weight of 220. His meals are monitored and a
machine jiggles his midsection for an hour of exercise each day at the
Kelikexin International Weight Loss Club. For a bit of extra exercise,
he goes for walks by himself.

"When I get down to [220 pounds], I'll be ready to go home," the 29-year-old Beijing resident said recently. "I can live a normal life."

To Tian, his progress represents a new lease on life — one he hopes will include a job in computer programming and a happy marriage — as
long as he can control himself in a city where inexpensive, unhealthy
food abounds and exercise is not part of the daily lifestyle.

Throughout China, but especially in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin, the ongoing fight against growing waistlines has developed a
few new wrinkles. Diet fads and weight loss centers are on the rise as
the traditional Chinese diet of vegetables and rice in many cases has
been expanded, adding meat, oil and plenty of sugary snacks and drinks
available at fast food chains and neighborhood shops dotting city
corners.

Experts say reasons for the weight gain other than lousy eating habits include poor city planning — the dearth of green space and parks in Chinese cities — and general attitudes toward exercise and
leisure. Bicycling, a key way for many Chinese to remain lean, is out of
fashion.

An estimated 200 million Chinese adults are considered overweight and of those about 75 million are heavy enough to be categorized as obese, according to health experts. While not as severe a
problem as in the United States, where estimates place more than 60% of
adults as overweight or obese, experts say China increasingly faces a
population coping with heart disease, diabetes and other weight-related
illnesses.

Drugs, treatment and access to good doctors are expensive and beyond the reach of average Chinese. The government is spending $125 billion to revamp the health system to cover all Chinese
citizens by 2020, but the plan is not expected to cover common diseases
associated with weight.

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