China, enjoying rapidly rising incomes and an increasingly rich diet, will have at least 200 million obese people in 10 years, official media reported on Saturday. "Among the obese, children are the most disturbing," the official Xinhua news agency said, quoting a chief doctor at a hospital in Guangdong province. "Ten percent are obese and the number is undergoing an annual 8 percent increase."
Thanks to official policy discouraging women from having more than one child, many Chinese families have just one boy or girl doted on by six adults: two parents and four grandparents.
And in a country that suffered mass starvation only a few decades ago, it is difficult to persuade those grandparents not to give the child just a little bit more to eat.
Xinhua said China's traditionally slim population of 1.3 billion already included more than 90 million obese people - those whose weight exceeded the standard by 20 percent.
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