Weight-loss methods are having little affect on the country's rapidly increasing overweight population. Experts say so-called scientific weight-reducing products flooding the market may be failing consumers.

"Almost all the people who tried to lose weight can be called a loser because of their methods," said Huang Mingda, secretary-general of a weight-loss committee with the World Natural Medicine Association.

People depend too much on medicine, health products and various operations to lose weight. But they tend to ignore one basic fact that being overweight or obesity is caused by poor life styles - such as eating too much junk food and not exercising. Strict, scientific and long-term efforts to combat fat are needed, Huang told China Daily in an exclusive interview yesterday.

However, almost all weight-loss products claim customers can reduce their weight easily and quickly by using their products and claim customers need not adjust their diets.

"Eat what you like and as much as you like - if you use our products" has become a very popular slogan for weight-reducing wares in China.

The sales volume of these products, including medicines, food, medical operations and equipment has reached more than 20 billion yuan (US$2.4 billion), Huang said.

And the number is increasing by 5 to 10 percent annually in the world's most populous country. China has approximately 200 million overweight people and 60 million classified obese.

The report in a national survey on the status of nutrition and health of Chinese people, which was released yesterday, shows that 22.8 percent of the sampled adults are overweight, and the rate of obesity is nearly 7.1 percent.

Even more alarming is that the child obesity rate has reached 8.1 percent.

Compared with a nutrition survey taken in 1992, the number of overweight adults has increased by 39 percent, and that of those classified as clinically obese is up 97 percent.

The big rise in overweight people means that there will be a large increase in cases of obesity in the near future.

This huge increase in overweight people will, in return, result in a greatly expanded weight-loss products market.

To make the market successful and sustainable, both businessmen and consumers should be more rational and do things more scientifically, Huang said.

There are two causes that could lead a person to being overweight, one is internal, the other external.

But only 20 to 30 percent of overweight people can attribute their weight gain to a medical problem, while 70 to 80 percent are fat because they eat too much, do too little physical exercise and lead otherwise unhealthy lifestyles.

He said that qualified weight-reducing products and methods can help people lose weight caused by external reasons.

However, the key problem is that many producers of these products pay scant regard to substantial research. Instead, they tend to depend too much on advertising to gain market shares, Huang said.

Meanwhile, the majority of people reduce their weight too casually, and often in a confusing way, instead of systematically and scientifically, Huang said.

He was echoed by Chen Chunming, a famous obesity expert from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, who said weight-loss is a kind of science and should be done strictly according to the guidance of doctors.

The reality now is that many people just buy medicines and try various products, Chen said. They not only fail to lose weight but also destroy their health.

In China, people who reduce their weight for health reasons only account for less than 20 percent of all who manage to lose weight, Huang said. The rest are trying to reduce weight just because they, mainly females, want to be fashionably slim, he said.

He said that among those women who always say that they need to lose weight, half are not even overweight. These women, mostly aged between 20 and 35, are facing fierce social competition in an increasingly image-conscious society.

(China Daily October 13, 2004)