Nutrition Situation in China

YANG Xiaoguang

National Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention

Abstract:
China is facing nutrition transition problem. The nutrition situation is described as follows:
(1). In general, the protein-energy malnutrition has dropped significantly, whereas nutrition deficiency is still prevalent in less developed areas.The overall nutrition status of Chinese residents has been significantly improved. ng prevalence. For instance, the underweight prevalence of children under-five in rural has decreased from 22.6% (1990) to 13.9% (2000) and even 9.3% (2002). For urban children, the figure drops from 8.6% (1990) to 3% (2000). Stunting prevalence for the same age in rural China has dropped from 41.4% to 20.5%, and 17.3% in 2002. More importantly, the urban/rural difference in malnutrition has been substantially narrowed in term of their underweight and stuntince.

(2).IDD has successfully controlled, whereas iron and vitamin A deficiency among children are still very prevalent micronutrient deficiency in China.Iron and Vitamin A deficiency is still a common nutrition problem in China due to the traditional dietary pattern. In 2002, the average anemia rate is 20.1%, 23.3% in pregnant women, 31% in children under-two. 11% of children aged 3-12 in rural areas are vitamin-A deficient, which is 3.7 times of that of children in urban. These micronutrient deficiencies have impact on the disease incidence and mortality of children, and on the health status of the population as well.

(3).The overall food insecurity issue has been solved in China while the diet quality has been dramatically improved, but rapid dietary imbalance is emerging. In the past decade, the average energy intake of Chinese residents kept stable around 2300 kcal per day, and food security has been achieved. Dietary quality of farmers has been significantly improved, getting closer to the recommended optimal dietary pattern. Comparing data in 2002 with that in 1992, meat consumption of farmers is doubled, 2.7 times for egg consumption, 1.6 times for oil and fat consumption; their energy intake from animal source is 4.5 percentage points higher, energy share of fat increased from 18.6% to 27.5% and energy share of carbohydrate reduced from 71.1% to 61.5%.

(4).The nutrition and physical activity-related chronic diseases is rapidly increasing

In 2002, the hypertension and hyper triglyceride incidence among adults are 18.8% and 18.6% respectively, accounted for 160 millions of people. The diabetes incidence is 2.61%, the prevalence of impaired fast blood glucose is 1.9%；22.8% of adults are overweight, 7.1% are obese, which are approximately 200 million and 60 million, respectively. What concerns us is that there is no significant difference between rural and urban population in term of hypertension incidence.