Obesity prevalence among Chinese adolescents surges from 0.10% to 8.25% in 34 years: study

Students taste food during a nutritious catering class stemming from the implementation of the "Nutrition School" project in the school kitchen of the Experimental School Affiliated to Niulanshan First Secondary School in Shunyi District of Beijing, December 20, 2019. (Photo: Xinhua)

The obesity rate among Chinese adolescents surged from 0.10 percent to 8.25 percent during the 34 years from 1985 to 2019, with adolescents from rural areas facing greater nutrition and health risks, the Global Times learned from a research team of the Institute of Child and Adolescent Health (ICAH), Peking University, on Tuesday.

According to the team's latest study, which was published online by The Lancet on Monday, from 1985 to 2014, the average obesity prevalence among urban children and adolescents was consistently higher than that of their rural counterparts. With the exception of 1985 and 1995, rural children persistently exhibited a greater prevalence of thinness compared with their urban counterparts.

The study predicts that the prevalence of childhood and adolescent obesity will continue to rise nationwide in both urban and rural areas.

Our projections indicate that the increasing prevalence of childhood obesity in rural and lower socioeconomic status areas will dominate a future pandemic of obesity among Chinese children and adolescents. China will gradually exhibit similar patterns of nutritional inequality as seen in some industrialized high-income countries, Dong Yanhui, a corresponding author of the study from the ICAH, told the Global Times.

Obesity and underweight during childhood and adolescence have a profound impact on health in adulthood. Over the past 30 years, there has been a global shift in the nutritional patterns of children and adolescents from predominantly undernutrition to predominantly overnutrition, a phenomenon closely related to socioeconomic development, Dong said.

In China, obesity among adolescents has also been a major concern of Chinese parents and relevant Chinese authorities in recent years. The National Health Commission recently released China's first authoritative guideline for multidisciplinary diagnosis and treatment of obesity in order to further improve the standardization of obesity diagnosis and treatment in the country, People's Daily reported on October 23.

According to People's Daily, from 2015 to 2019, the overweight rate and obesity prevalence among Chinese adolescents aged 6 to 17 were 11.1 percent and 7.9 percent, respectively, while the overweight rate and obesity prevalence among children under 6 years old were 6.8 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively.

Previous studies have revealed a narrowing obesity gap between adolescents in urban and rural areas. However, there is still a lack of recent data regarding contemporary nutritional inequities among children and adolescents, particularly in relation to urban-rural residence and regional socioeconomic status, according to Dong.

Our study revealed that children and adolescents in underdeveloped regions face significant nutritional and health risks, marking them as a particularly vulnerable group. Notably, these risks are now more closely associated with obesity rather than underweight. Considering this, there is an urgent need to take action to eliminate the potential health inequalities related to obesity among current and future Chinese children and adolescents, which requires more comprehensive and extensive preventive health investments, Dong noted.

The study of the ICAH focused on children and adolescents aged 7-18 years in China. It covered 1,677,261 participants from 30 provincial-level regions, the Global Times learned.