BEIJING // Sitting in a McDonald's in central Beijing, Tan Shisheng admitted that the food his young daughter eats is not always very healthy.
But Mr Tan, the product manager for a food company, said his two-and-a-half-year-old child is so headstrong that he and his wife feel they have little choice but to give in and go to fast-food restaurants for meals.
"When she sees the capital letter 'M', she goes almost crazy about McDonald's. We have no choice. She likes to have chips and ketchup," said Mr Tan, 40, as his wife, Li Xiaofang, fed a chip to the little girl, Tan Panpan.
"So far, we don't worry about it as she's not fat at all. Maybe in the next few years, when she's a bit older, we'll be more concerned."
While Tan Panpan is for the moment a picture of health, the same cannot be said of many children in China.
Figures for Beijing last year published in state media showed that 25.6 per cent of 12-year-old children were obese. There is even a problem among the under fives, 17 per cent of whom are obese and therefore five times as likely to be overweight in later childhood.
"You don't tend to see fat families. You tend to see the fat kid. The little emperor is fat. He's having McDonald's, and no one ever says no to him when he wants his Coca-Cola and biscuits. In the next generation we may see fat mums and dads with their kids," said Paul French, co-author of a book published last year called Fat China, and publishing and marketing director of the Shanghai research agency Access Asia.
As China has urbanised, with last year's census finding that 49.7 per cent of the country's population now lives in towns and cities, more adults and children experience the sedentary lifestyles that cause people to become overweight.
For youngsters, time playing outside has been replaced by hours spent in front of a computer, while adults, instead of toiling in the fields, now experience the physically undemanding existence of the office worker, ticket attendant or street vendors.
Diets have changed too: the Chinese have enthusiastically embraced fast food to the extent that KFC has 3,700 restaurants across the country.
Concerns over the cleanliness of many traditional restaurants partly explains why people visit Western fast-food chains, said Yang Yang, 21, a Beijing-based student originally from central China's Henan province.
"People find these restaurants enjoyable. They are nicer inside, that's why they're becoming more popular," he said.
Christine Chan, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychological Studies at the Hong Kong Institute of Education whose research deals with obesity among children, said there had been a dramatic shift in eating patterns in just a decade.
"They've gone from starving to overeating. All these fast food restaurants, takeaway shops and ready-eat meals ... people are eating the wrong food," she said.
"It's easier to buy ready-eat meals and on the other hand, they have no time to cook at home. That's why [obesity] is rising rapidly in China and Hong Kong."
There are sometimes limited opportunities for children to get exercise at school, partly because some parents do not appreciate the importance of physical activity. Grandparents will commonly carry the schoolbag of their grandson or granddaughter.
"They're supposed to do one hour of physical activity [at school each day], but the parents complain, 'Why are the kids doing one hour of sport? - that's not going to get them into Harvard,'" Mr French said.
As well as encouraging more exercise, improvements in food labelling are needed to help people make better choices on what they eat, Dr Chan said.
Yet even with such initiatives, the picture remains bleak because an estimated 15 million rural dwellers are still moving to the cities annually and experiencing the increases in income and dietary changes that China's well-off coastal regions have gone through.
"For these rapidly developing areas, obesity will still grow fast if the government's focus is on economic growth and not on people's quality of life," Dr Chan said.
Medical conditions caused by obesity, such as Type 2 diabetes, are likely to become more common. Already 92 million Chinese have diabetes and a further 150 million are at risk of developing it.
"Over the coming 10 years there will be a huge medical burden from these kinds of obesity-related diseases in China as well as Hong Kong," Dr Chan said.
This is a particular concern given the limitations of China's healthcare system, Mr French said.
With the government seemingly reluctant to push healthy eating and exercise messages on the public, he said the problem was likely to grow.
"It's inevitable. No one has an answer to this," he said.
dbardsley@thenational.ae
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Dubai works towards better air quality by 2021
Dubai is on a mission to record good air quality for 90 per cent of the year – up from 86 per cent annually today – by 2021.
The municipality plans to have seven mobile air-monitoring stations by 2020 to capture more accurate data in hourly and daily trends of pollution.
These will be on the Palm Jumeirah, Al Qusais, Muhaisnah, Rashidiyah, Al Wasl, Al Quoz and Dubai Investment Park.
“It will allow real-time responding for emergency cases,” said Khaldoon Al Daraji, first environment safety officer at the municipality.
“We’re in a good position except for the cases that are out of our hands, such as sandstorms.
“Sandstorms are our main concern because the UAE is just a receiver.
“The hotspots are Iran, Saudi Arabia and southern Iraq, but we’re working hard with the region to reduce the cycle of sandstorm generation.”
Mr Al Daraji said monitoring as it stood covered 47 per cent of Dubai.
There are 12 fixed stations in the emirate, but Dubai also receives information from monitors belonging to other entities.
“There are 25 stations in total,” Mr Al Daraji said.
“We added new technology and equipment used for the first time for the detection of heavy metals.
“A hundred parameters can be detected but we want to expand it to make sure that the data captured can allow a baseline study in some areas to ensure they are well positioned.”
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The Penguin
Starring: Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz
Creator: Lauren LeFranc
Rating: 4/5
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BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE
Starring: Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, Jenny Ortega
Director: Tim Burton
Rating: 3/5
Day 1 results:
Open Men (bonus points in brackets)
New Zealand 125 (1) beat UAE 111 (3)
India 111 (4) beat Singapore 75 (0)
South Africa 66 (2) beat Sri Lanka 57 (2)
Australia 126 (4) beat Malaysia -16 (0)
Open Women
New Zealand 64 (2) beat South Africa 57 (2)
England 69 (3) beat UAE 63 (1)
Australia 124 (4) beat UAE 23 (0)
New Zealand 74 (2) beat England 55 (2)
'My Son'
Director: Christian Carion
Starring: James McAvoy, Claire Foy, Tom Cullen, Gary Lewis
Rating: 2/5
The%20specs%20
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UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
The Perfect Couple
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Liev Schreiber, Jack Reynor
Creator: Jenna Lamia
Rating: 3/5
Our House, Louise Candlish,
Simon & Schuster
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
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MORE FROM CON COUGHLIN
THE NEW BATCH'S FOCUS SECTORS
AiFlux – renewables, oil and gas
DevisionX – manufacturing
Event Gates – security and manufacturing
Farmdar – agriculture
Farmin – smart cities
Greener Crop – agriculture
Ipera.ai – space digitisation
Lune Technologies – fibre-optics
Monak – delivery
NutzenTech – environment
Nybl – machine learning
Occicor – shelf management
Olymon Solutions – smart automation
Pivony – user-generated data
PowerDev – energy big data
Sav – finance
Searover – renewables
Swftbox – delivery
Trade Capital Partners – FinTech
Valorafutbol – sports and entertainment
Workfam – employee engagement
Russia's Muslim Heartlands
Dominic Rubin, Oxford
World Cup final
Who: France v Croatia
When: Sunday, July 15, 7pm (UAE)
TV: Game will be shown live on BeIN Sports for viewers in the Mena region
Key changes
Commission caps
For life insurance products with a savings component, Peter Hodgins of Clyde & Co said different caps apply to the saving and protection elements:
• For the saving component, a cap of 4.5 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 90 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• On the protection component, there is a cap of 10 per cent of the annualised premium per year (which may not exceed 160 per cent of the annualised premium over the policy term).
• Indemnity commission, the amount of commission that can be advanced to a product salesperson, can be 50 per cent of the annualised premium for the first year or 50 per cent of the total commissions on the policy calculated.
• The remaining commission after deduction of the indemnity commission is paid equally over the premium payment term.
• For pure protection products, which only offer a life insurance component, the maximum commission will be 10 per cent of the annualised premium multiplied by the length of the policy in years.
Disclosure
Customers must now be provided with a full illustration of the product they are buying to ensure they understand the potential returns on savings products as well as the effects of any charges. There is also a “free-look” period of 30 days, where insurers must provide a full refund if the buyer wishes to cancel the policy.
“The illustration should provide for at least two scenarios to illustrate the performance of the product,” said Mr Hodgins. “All illustrations are required to be signed by the customer.”
Another illustration must outline surrender charges to ensure they understand the costs of exiting a fixed-term product early.
Illustrations must also be kept updatedand insurers must provide information on the top five investment funds available annually, including at least five years' performance data.
“This may be segregated based on the risk appetite of the customer (in which case, the top five funds for each segment must be provided),” said Mr Hodgins.
Product providers must also disclose the ratio of protection benefit to savings benefits. If a protection benefit ratio is less than 10 per cent "the product must carry a warning stating that it has limited or no protection benefit" Mr Hodgins added.
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