A more likely explanation is that the arrival of cars, fast food, and a middle-class lifestyle is making Chinese people obese, just as it's making Americans obese. Studies show a direct correlation between obesity rates and rates of car ownership in China.
I don't question any of your data or even your conclusion, but do you really think WHITE-COLLAR workers having diabetes is a proof of " food is low quality empty calories"?
To me, it's more about the fact that lots of young people (or people in general) in urban area have poor lifestyle. Barely has anything to do with the lack of food quality or nutrition.
And I highly doubt this phenomenon is unique to China.
Keep in mind the topic is "how is China able to provide enough food for 1.4 billion people", which implies they must have some efficient or cheap way. And I'd agree "rice" probably is one of the reason.
However, you firstly used "Shanghai's white-collar" as an example, which is the least representative group for this topic (because how cheap the food is is less of a concern for the high-income groups).
You also mentioned obesity, which only dramatically increases when China got richer. Again, totally irrelevant to the topic. If anything, Chinese people probably eat less rice now due to the increase of variety.
I do not thing that being a dietician gives you much authority to comment on the cross-cultural socioeconomics of nutrition, sorry.
The claim that the Chinese are fat and unhealthy because they are force-fed empty calories remains unproven.
That's because: (1) it's rich in toxins due to the industrial processing and (2) it has a poor proteins/nutrients to energy ratio.
Nutrient hunger is a thing. Proteins are regulated by the brain. Micro nutrients might be regulated by the brain as well. When you eat ultra-processed food, you end up eating more food just to get the nutrients you need to live.
Ultra-processed food is also rich in calories, often being high in carbs and high in fat at the same time, a very unnatural combination that floods the brain with dopamine, making you overeat and crave for more.
You basically can't get lower quality than this.
> "as opposed to unconstrained individual choice"
There's no such thing, you're not aware of many of the recent findings.
I recommend you go read: https://www.stephanguyenet.com/thehungrybrain/
(2) is a valid point, but (1) should be entirely prevented by the FDA.
But again à lot of it is a question of dosage. A bottle of coke a week might not do much, a bottle a day and it's a whole other story.
"The most neglected threat to public health in China is toxic soil" -- https://www.economist.com/briefing/2017/06/08/the-most-negle... (2017)
All the things in their air and water (Quote from the article: "Wen Jiabao, a former prime minister, once said that water problems threaten “the very survival of the Chinese nation”.".
- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-soil/chin...
- https://www.iisd.org/blog/toxic-soil-china
- https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/10949-C...
I don't know if it's because they can't afford better or don't want to eat better, but in the US there is a considerable relationship between income/education and obesity. The poorer you are, the more likely you are to be obese. 50% of the US makes less than $30k a year, and that group probably amounts to somewhere around 75% of the obese people.
Healthy eating simply isn’t prioritized by some people/groups, and others don’t value it at all.
Yes, of course. Is this rhetorical? Obesity and wealth are highly correlated.
Going to China and eating with Chinese people, it’s a very easy thing to do. Chinese food portions can sometimes make American food portions look downright tiny—and a lot of it is colossal chunks of meat with vegetables.
- In Shanghai 96% white-collar workers have at least one disease of the "food triad" (diabetes, fatty liver, hypertension), up from ~80% in 00's.
- In Beijing 26% of the whole population is overweight or obese, up from 11% in 00's.
- China has the largest percentage of obese children in the World, only competing with Mexico.
So there is enough food, but this food is low quality empty calories to "feed" 1B people, not nourish them.