BEIJING: Chinese people are growing taller as the country becomes richer but they are getting fatter even faster, the government said.

Adult obesity rates reached 9.6 per cent in 2012, more than doubling over a decade, the National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a report on national nutrition and chronic diseases. Those who were overweight went from 7.1 per cent to 11.9 per cent.

Among six to 17-year-olds the obesity increase was even more dramatic, more than tripling from 2.1 per cent to 6.4 per cent, while the proportion overweight went up by almost a third, to 30.1 percent.

“The problem of overweight and obesity is rising sharply as the dietary make-up has changed,” Wang Guoqiang, a vice director of commission, told a press conference.

The average Chinese man weighed 66.2 kilograms in 2012, extracts from the document posted online by the commission showed, up 3.5 kilograms over 10 years.

Women were 2.9 kilograms heavier on average at 57.3 kilograms.

Published in Dawn, July 2nd, 2015

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