KFC expand in China - Obesity to follow ?

[Zedi]

Reuters
Published: May 5, 2008

SHANGHAI: With a possible U.S. recession looming, Colonel Sanders is turning to China to increase sales, offering a menu of fried dough and preserved egg porridge alongside the chicken that turned KFC into an American icon.

If China follows the pattern of every other country engulfed by fast food will it have its own obesity statistics ?

[skyjet]

Not if they serve the same as this Mcdonalds restaurant



Real chicken head found in McDonalds Happy Meal
A woman found it in the box of McDonald's chicken wings. It was the beak and eyeballs that tipped her off that wing was in fact NOT a wing at all.

[Zedi]

Maybe if people in the U.S saw how their dinner was caught they would think twice about eating so much.

http://www.arch1design.com/Chicken_for_dinner.html

[skyjet]

 By BHARATHI RADHAKRISHNAN, ABC News Medical Unit
June 13, 2006


The fast food chain KFC is being sued for the fat content in its fried chicken, which Center for Science in the Public Interest says contains "staggering amounts" of trans fat.

One three-piece Extra Crispy combo meal has 15 grams of trans fat, which is more trans fat than a person should have in one week, says the CSPI.

[Zedi]

Didnt the case get withdrawn because they started frying in Soya oil ?

[skyjet]

Yes but apparently they upset some environmental groups because the soya they used came from
chopped down areas of the amazon rainforest replaced by soya fields.

But the point is they been getting away with it for 50 years... be interesting to see if chronic
heart disease is reduced in the States over the next 30 years.

[amg]

Thing is most people in U.S think soya is heathy -

So What’s Wrong With Soy?

"Unlike in Asia where people eat small amounts of whole soybean products, western food processors separate the soybean into two golden commodities--protein and oil. There's nothing safe or natural about this,” Dr. Daniel says.

“Today's high-tech processing methods not only fail to remove the anti-nutrients and toxins that are naturally present in soybeans but leave toxic and carcinogenic residues created by the high temperatures, high pressure, alkali and acid baths and petroleum solvents," she continues.

To make matters worse, Americans are consuming soy in unprecedented amounts. Among the many health problems linked to a high-soy diet are:

• Thyroid problems, including weight gain, lethargy, malaise, fatigue, hair loss, and loss of libido
• Premature puberty and other developmental problems in babies, children and adolescents
• Cancer
• Brain damage
• Reproductive disorders
• Soy allergies

[skyjet]

 20 Oct 2008 REUTERS


HONG KONG: Chronic illnesses such as cancer and heart and respiratory diseases are ticking timebombs in China, and Chinese must cut their intake of fatty foods and salt, stop smoking and start exercising, health experts said.

Increasingly affluent Chinese in urban and rural areas consumed between 25 and 100 percent more fat each day in 2002 compared with 1982, sharply raising the risk of heart disease and cancer, the experts wrote in The Lancet medical journal.

The report, by researchers in China and the United States, is part of a special series on China's health reforms. While the country was plagued by infectious diseases before 1990, chronic illnesses are now its main health problem and they accounted for 74.1 percent of all deaths in 2005, up from 47.1 percent in 1973, the researchers wrote.

While these chronic illnesses have to do with people living longer, several high-risk factors are also involved. Apart from a fatty diet, many Chinese consume a relatively high 12-gram dosage of salt daily, which the paper said accounted for hypertension in some 177m Chinese adults.

Based on Chinese definitions, 22.8 percent of Chinese were overweight in 2002, up 39 percent from 1992. Some 7.1 percent in the population were obese in 2002.

[skyjet]

 Western diet causes 30% of world's heart attacks  

 

  OTTAWA, Oct. 20 (Xinhua) -- The typical western diet of red meat, fried foods, dairy products and salty snacks is responsible for 30 percent of the world's heart attacks, Canadian scientists have found.

    After analyzing data from the dietary patterns of 16,000 people in 52 countries. scientists at Hamilton's McMaster University found the best diet is one that includes eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables, which is linked to a 30 percent decrease in heart attack risk.

    The diet is more effective at lowering heart attack risk than many drugs currently on the market, study author Dr. Salim Yusef told reporters Monday.

    "What we've shown is if you eat a healthy diet you can actually reduce the risk of heart attack by about 30 to 40 percent. That is bigger than most drugs we have for protecting against heart disease, " Yusef said.

    "It's even bigger than an angioplasty or bypass."

    The healthy diet was more effective than the traditional oriental diet that consists of tofu and soy, which the authors found to have no effect on heart attack risk.

    In contrast, the Western diet was found to boost heart attack risk by 35 percent.

    Yusef said that this pattern of a good diet or a bad diet had the same effect in different parts of the world, so whichever parts of the world people are from, they are encouraged to eat more fruits and vegetables and less salty and fatty foods.

    The findings are particularly important now that the western diet has become more popular in other regions of the world, Yusef said.

    The findings are published in the journal "Circulation".
 

[skyjet]

November 04

All processed chemicals that are used in foods have seriously detrimental effects on human health and energy levels and have no place in the modern human diet

To highlight this, let's take hydrogenated oils and see what this substance really is and why it's so incredibly bad for you. Hydrogenated oils are oils that are often healthy in their natural state, but are quickly turned into poisons through the manufacturing and processing they undergo. They take these naturally healthy oils such as palm, kernel, soybean, corn oil or coconut oil and they heat it anywhere from five hundred to one thousand degrees under several atmospheres of pressure.

They then inject a catalyst into the oil for several hours. The catalyst is typically a metal such a nickel, platinum or even aluminum. As this bubbles up into the oil the molecular structure changes and increases in density and rearranges it's molecules so that instead of a liquid at room temperature we now have either semi-solid or solid oil. This creates either partially hydrogenated or fully hydrogenated oils.

The molecules in this new product are now closer to cellulose or plastic than to oil. In fact hydrogenated oil is only one molecule away from being plastic. When you eat anything containing this material, just as the oil is now thicker and more viscous (dense), so too does your blood become thicker and more viscous right along with it. The heart now has to work so much harder to pump blood throughout the system. This is one of the major ways that consuming hydrogenated oils contributes to high blood pressure.

As you can imagine, this thicker blood with this gummy substance flowing with it can easily lodge in the arteries and build up the arterial plaque. It doesn't take anywhere near as much time as you may think for this to occur. Some studies have shown that negative health effects of eating processed foods occurs within only minutes of consuming such foods.

This thicker blood which has a harder time pumping through the arteries also has a much harder time getting up to the brain. Hydrogenated oils can slow the micro circulation of blood through the brain further causing various emotional and physical ailments such an Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ADHD and muddled thinking just to name a few. Remember also that one of the metals sometimes used in the hydrogenation process is aluminum which more and more studies are now linking to Alzheimer's disease.

There are stories of doctors who performed surgery and found several inches of a thick fatty substance in patient's arteries. Later this was identified to be the fatty, hydrogenated oil laden fast food breakfast of that patient the day before surgery. Not a pleasant thought at all.

Hydrogenated oils are great as preservatives precisely because all the enzymatic activity in the oil has been neutralized during the hydrogenating process. Remember that this hydrogenated oil is only one molecule away from plastic and plastic does not breakdown, it lasts for millennia which is one reason that even our oceans are starting to turn to plastic.

If un-hydrogenated oils put into foods they would go bad very fast. This would increase the cost to the manufacturer. That's because natural oils have enzymatic activity occurring in them which is what causes them and all foods to rot at room temperature. Any food that does not rot at room temperature is considered a "dead" food and should not be consumed.

In fact the faster a food goes bad, the healthier they usually are. That's because the enzymatic activity which causes the foods to rot at room temperature also means that the enzymatic activity within your own body will be greater as well. Food is basically meant to digest itself so eating foods high in natural enzymes such as fresh vegetables, fruits and other raw foods means less stress on your own digestive system. This is especially true when foods are eaten in proper combinations and in line with the laws and rules of Trophology (The science of food combining).

The more enzyme dead food and ingredients you consume, the more your own body has to create and use up its own food enzymes during digestion. The act of digestion is a strenuous one on the body and requires a lot of Chi, nutrients and enzymes to take place. This places a large strain on your internal organs, especially the pancreas which has to create the necessary food enzymes for digestion. An overworked pancreas is actually one of the major causes of type II diabetes which is basically pancreatic failure.

Trying to digest this plastic-like hydrogenated oil takes a massive amount of enzymes and chi from the system. But the body never really succeeds because this material is not natural and it's a substance that the body is not designed to absorb. Such foreign substances often cause false immune response which place a great strain on the immune system and decreases overall immunity.

As the body sends more enzymes (digestive acids) into the stomach to try and digest this plastic like oil, the internal stomach temperature rises. This is another way that these unhealthy oils can lead to cancer as cancer is classified as a "Yang" or "Fire" symptom in Chinese medicine. It can take thousands of degrees to break down plastic. The body is often only partially successful at breaking down and digesting hydrogenated oils.

The Cell Wall

Cell walls are normally made up of healthy oils such as Omega-3 and Omega-6 fats, also known as essential fatty acids (EFA's). The walls of your cells are the cells defense mechanism so it's crucial that they have sufficient EFA's in the cell wall. This is what allows nutrients and waste matter to pass in and out the call yet keeps foreign invaders and pathogens out.

Once hydrogenated oils reach the cell, they try to assimilate them into the make up of the cell wall. Without sufficient EFA's, the cells are now forced to use this destructive hydrogenated oil into its cellular matrix to make up the difference. What's worse is that this new cell wall now made up of hydrogenated oils is virtually useless and this compromises the very function of the cell wall.

The presence of hydrogenated oils in the cell walls actually prevents nutrients from entering the cell but at the same time allowing pathogens, microbes and viruses to pass through. It also prevents waste material getting out of the cell. Between the nutrients that are kept out of the cell and the waste matter that is now trapped in the cell, the cell often mutates or dies which can lead to cancer, tumors or other serious health issues.

Electromagnetic Fields and the Cell Wall

The cell wall not only has a physical barrier made up of the normally health EFA's, but it has an electromagnetic (EM) barrier too. This EM field or barrier helps the cell to identify viruses, bacteria and pathogens, many of which have a positive ionic charge. Positive ions cause oxidation of the cells and are typically known as "oxidants". Healthy nutrients and bacteria have a negative ionic charge. Nutrients with a negative ionic charge are also known by the common name "anti-oxidants".

The cells use this and other similar mechanisms to help identify which substances to allow through that force field and which to repel. The cell would typically allow materials with negative charges to pass through while repelling those with positive charges. With the physical and electromagnetic functions of the cell wall now compromised due to the presence of hydrogenated oils, the cell is no longer able to identify friendly nutrients from foreign invaders.

This opens the flood gates for invaders to enter the cell and destroy it from within. With the cell wall functions now compromised and with little or no nutrients getting into the cell, it is basically defenseless and all manner of serious negative health effects can arise. Cellular toxicity will also rise at the same time due to the increased presence of waste matter that hydrogenated oils trap inside the cells.

Some ways to counter this and help strengthen the EM field of your cells is to practice deep breathing exercises. When we practice deep breathing we're taking in large amounts of chi and negative ionic energy into our bodies. This extra energy greatly strengthens the EM field of all the cells in the body and can help counter the negative effects of hydrogenated oils should we consume any.

This is one of many ways that natural techniques which make the body more "Yin" (negative) can help to decrease the overall incidence of disease. Since many of today's most common problems and ailments are diseases of excess positive ionic energy, keeping the negative ion fields of the body as strong as possible becomes a major factor in constant battle against dis-ease.

Tips to Avoid Hydrogenated Oils

To help avoid hydrogenated oils, most of your foods should be raw and as close to their natural state as possible. This means more fruits and vegetables including organic local meats as fresh as possible. The more real foods from nature that you eat, the less packaged and processed foods you'll consume. It's the packaged and processed foods that are most likely to be made with hydrogenated oils to help increase their shelf life.

This really means a change in the way that we think about food and what we classify as food. True foods are those from nature, in their natural pristine state, not those that come out of a factory or a box. You can't rely on the government or any other source to tell you what is ok to put into you or your families body.

It absolutely means becoming a label reader and checking everything you buy that's packaged and processed. You especially want to make sure that hydrogenated oils and other negative ingredients such as high fructose corn syrup are not listed as ingredients, even on packages that have the word "organic" on the box.

Just because a package has the word organic on the label doesn't mean that it's necessarily a healthy food. Packaged and processed foods with organic on the box would really be considered "less damaging" but not truly healthy. To be truly healthy means that a food is full of enzymes, phytonutrients, and life force with all their natural vitamins and minerals present.

Enzymes are actually more important than any vitamin, mineral or other nutrient since all processes that occur in the body must have sufficient supplies of enzymes to do their job. Foods that have had their enzymes destroyed are automatically classified as "dead foods"

Hydrogenated oils are absolutely one of the worst ingredients being put into the modern food supply today for the many reasons stated. This is an ingredient that must be totally avoided at all costs. This is especially important if you're looking to recover your health in any form.

Beware that eating out in restaurants can pose just as great a health risk as packaged and processed foods do. That's because many restaurants use hydrogenated oils in nearly everything they prepare. This is another reason that eating out too often can have very negative health effects.

The best solution is to prepare your own foods at home as often as you can and getting as far away from a processed food diet as possible. This way you know exactly what you're putting into your body and not leaving it up to modern manufacturers of today's so called "foods" that have no concern for your health or well being at all.

Rich Stacel

[skyjet]

McDonald’s to Open 175 Restaurants in China Next Year


Nov. 14 (Bloomberg) --

 McDonald’s Corp., the world’s largest restaurant company, plans to add 175 restaurants in China next year after opening its 1,000th outlet in the country today.

The latest restaurant was opened in Dongguan in Guangdong province, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company said in an e- mailed statement. The 2009 plan will create 10,000 restaurant jobs and 1,200 manager positions, it said.

McDonald’s joins other foreign consumer companies such as Pepsico Inc., Best Buy Co. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in focusing on emerging markets such as China, which saw retail sales rise 22 percent in October, close to the fastest pace in nine years.

“In difficult times, consumers still want to go out to eat but might go to cheaper places, such as McDonald’s,” Shaun Rein, managing director of China Market Research Group, said over the phone from Shanghai.

“McDonald’s have the right price points and they have good quality control,” he said, adding he doesn’t see a marked slowdown in consumer spending in China even though economic growth weakened to 9 percent in the third quarter, the slowest pace in five years.

[skyjet]

 BEIJING, Nov. 15 (Xinhua) -- China saw a growing number of diabetics among children and adolescents in big cities, about 12 percent of whom were found obese, according to the Ministry of Health.

    The ministry released the rate during an event to mark the second United Nations World Diabetes Day, which fell on Friday, with the theme this year of "Diabetes in Children and Adolescents".

    Poor diet and greater awareness of diabetes among parents led to the problem, the ministry said. In Wuhan, capital city of central Hubei province, hospitals recorded more than 600 children and adolescents with diabetes. In 2004, the figure was four.

    China has an estimated 40 million diabetics, according to a survey conducted by the Chinese Medical Association in 2007. Most of these cases were found in cities and affluent rural areas.

    Beijing on Friday launched a month-long campaign to raise public awareness of diabetes, encouraging healthy lifestyles from a young age as a preventive measure.

    The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau on Friday organized a group of medical workers at the Olympic Green to give free advice to the public on preventing and treating diabetes.

    The bureau plans to provide free medical consultations in medical centers, and educate the public through TV and radio, newspapers, websites and brochures.

    "About 80 percent of diabetes cases can be avoided as long as people adhere to sound lifestyles," said Health Minister Chen Zhu.

    "The preventative measures should be taken among children and adolescents," said Chen. Bad habits, like inactivity, poor diet and obesity, started young and increased the risk of getting diabetes.   

[skyjet]

U.S. report: Gene mutation helps protect heart from high-fat diet 

WASHINGTON, Dec. 11 (Xinhua) -- The genetic mutation found in a small group of people helps protect their heart against the effects of high-fat diet, U.S. researchers reported Thursday.

    It may open the door to new therapies for cardiovascular disease.

    High blood levels of triglycerides, one of the most common types of fat in our food, have been linked to heart disease.

    A team of researchers from three U.S. universities conducted a study on volunteers from the genetically homogeneous Lancaster Amish population, to search for genes that contribute to individual differences in the body's handling of triglycerides.

    The researchers used blood samples to look for DNA markers throughout the volunteers' genomes that might be associated with blood triglyceride levels.

    This "genome-wide association study" led them to a mutation in the APOC3 gene, which encodes a protein, called apoC-III, that inhibits the breakdown of triglycerides.

    Individuals with this mutation produced half the normal amount of apoC-III and had the lowest blood triglyceride levels, presumably because they were able to break down more of the fat in their blood.

    The same individuals also had high levels of "good" cholesterol and low levels of "bad" one, and their levels of artery-hardening were relatively low, suggesting that they are less likely to develop cardiovascular disease.

    If researchers could develop drugs that target apoC-III or the gene that encodes it, these drugs might be useful against heart disease, the authors suggest in their papers published in the journal Science.

[skyjet]

 BEIJING, Dec. 15 -- Scientists may have figured out one reason some people reach for the french fries instead of an apple. It could be a gene that's been linked to an increased risk of obesity.

    A study of children found those with a common variation of the gene tend to overeat high-calorie foods. They ate 100 extra calories per meal, which over the long term can put on weight, said Colin Palmer, who led the study at the University of Dundee in Scotland.

    The findings don't mean that everyone with that version of the gene will eat too much and become obese, he said. They just might have a tendency to eat more fattening foods.

    "It's still your choice," he said. "This gene will not make you overweight if you do not overeat."

    Palmer said the results support the theory that childhood obesity today could be connected to the widespread availability and low cost of high-calorie foods. The research is published in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

    Last year, scientists discovered the gene, named FTO, was linked to obesity but they didn't know why. Most of the other genes thought to affect body weight influence appetite.

    Palmer and his colleagues wanted to know if the FTO gene also had to do with eating behavior, or whether it involved how the body burns calories. They studied over 2,700 Scottish children ages 4 to 10 and put a group of them through extensive tests.

    Nearly two-thirds of the children had at least one copy of the gene variant, about the same proportion found in last year's study of mostly white Europeans. That study found that those with one copy of the gene variant had a 30 percent increased risk of obesity, and carriers of two copies had almost a 70 percent increased risk.

    The gene variation is also found in other populations; the frequency in Chinese is about half that of Europeans.

    After confirming the obesity link in the larger Scottish group, the researchers examined 97 of the children. They took a number of measurements, including body fat and metabolic rate.

    The children were given three meals at school to evaluate their eating behavior. The meal included a mix of fruits and vegetables, ham, cheese, potato chips, chocolate candies and bread rolls.

    The researchers found that children with the gene variation showed no difference in metabolic rates, levels of physical activity or the amount of food eaten.

    "The only thing we could find was the fact that they were eating much richer foods," said Palmer.

    On average, those with the gene variant ate 100 calories more than those without it.

    Dr. Rudolph Leibel, an obesity researcher at Columbia University in New York, said getting good measurements of how much someone eats is difficult, but the Scottish study did it in a closely controlled manner.

    He said the overeating may be driven more by the need for calories than a preference for fatty foods. Fat is just a good way to get those extra calories.

    "Bite for bite, there are more calories in a Big Mac than there are in an apple," said Leibel, who wrote an editorial that accompanies the study in the journal.

    A recent study in the Amish suggested the variant's effects could be blunted with hours of physical activity. The lead author of that study, Evadnie Rampersaud of the University of Miami, noted that only 76 Scottish children completed all three meal tests.

    "While the results are intriguing, larger studies are needed to fully explore this hypothesis," she said in an e-mail.

    Palmer, the Scottish researcher, said there's no practical reason to screen people for the gene variation; there's likely to be many genes that affect obesity.

    And whether you have it or not, he said, the advice would be the same: Eat healthy and exercise.

    Palmer's DNA was included in last year's study but he doesn't know his status — though he does have a weakness for potato chips.

(Source: chinadaily.com.cn/Agencies)

[Zedi]

Simple Change Could Reduce Obesity in U.S. by 20 Percent

According to a new study, a ban on fast food advertisements in the United States could reduce the number of overweight children by as much as 18 percent. In addition, the study reports that eliminating the tax deductibility of television advertising would also result in a reduction of childhood obesity.

The study’s authors found that a ban on fast food television advertisements during children's programming would reduce the number of overweight children ages 3-11 by 18 percent, and would lower the number of overweight adolescents ages 12-18 by 14 percent.

Should the U.S. pursue this path, they would be following Sweden, Norway and Finland, which are thus far the only countries to have banned commercial sponsorship of children's programs.

Research indicates that there is an 80 percent chance an overweight adolescent will be an obese adult. Over 300,000 deaths can be attributed to obesity and weight in the United States every year.


Science Daily

[amg]

December 17, 2008

Death rate for heart diseases in U.S. drop dramatically

The death rate for heart diseases dropped by about 30 percent between 1999 and 2006 in the United States, according to figures published on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, death rate for stroke also dropped by about 30 percent, the Los Angeles Times said, quoting figures from the American Heart Association (AHA).

The achievements allowed the AHA to reach its 2010 goal of a 25-percent reduction in deaths of heart diseases and stroke four years early, the paper said.

In its annual report, the AHA said death rates in the U.S. from heart disease and stroke each dropped about 5 percent from 2005 to2006, the most recent year for which data were available.

Including the data for 2006, researchers found a 30.7 percent reduction in heart disease deaths since 1999 and a 29.2-percent reduction in stroke deaths.

"It's one of the most remarkable achievements of modern medicine to have this kind of decline," said Gregg C. Fonarow, a cardiologist at the Geffen School of Medicine under the University of California in Los Angeles.

"But there is still obviously a lot of work to be done. We still have the No. 1 and 3 killers of men and women in the United States," Fonarow was quoted as saying.

Fonarow said those gains were fueled by better preventive care for people in high-risk groups, more effective treatments in hospitals for those suffering heart attacks and strokes, and better care to prevent recurrences after a first episode.

Nonetheless, 829,072 Americans died of heart attack and stroke in 2006, 34.2 percent of the total, or one in every 2.9 deaths. Nearly 2,400 Americans die of cardiovascular disease each day, an average of one death every 37 seconds.

Despite the drops in death rates for heart diseases and stroke, experts fear the declines may soon be reversed.

"Although death rates are declining, several of the risk factors leading to heart disease are increasing," said Suzanne Steinbaum of Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, an AHA spokeswoman.

"There is an increase in obesity, diabetes and physical inactivity, which all lead to heart disease and stroke," she said.

Source: Xinhua

[amg]

China wrestles with growing obesity

About 30% of all Chinese adults are overweight or obese, says Chen Chunming, a nutritional expert at China's Center for Disease Control and Prevention, part of the Ministry of Health. "We don't need to keep doing new surveys. We know the problem is severe and getting worse," she says.

Public campaigns to fight China's expanding weight problem are hindered by the nation's newfound prosperity. "If you tell people not to eat hamburgers or other high-calorie foods, they say, 'I've got money now, I'll eat what I want,' " Chen says.

China's heavyweights still lag behind the USA, where two out of three people are overweight or obese, but China "is on course to be exactly like the U.S. in 10 or 20 years," says James Hill, director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver.

"No country has been able to stop things from getting worse. The causes of obesity are the same in China as in the USA. You have an environment where there are many foodstuffs available and no need for physical activity," he says

The causes of Chinese obesity aren't hard to miss. Tianjin, a city of 10 million south of Beijing, increasingly resembles cities in the West — and so do its people. Next to the Communist Party's School of Socialism is the bustling Buy Now computer warehouse and a McDonald's and KFC.

Diabetes caused by obesity "is much worse in China now than five years ago," says Guo Xirong, a scientist researching the issue at Nanjing Medical University. "I am optimistic we can help obese people avoid diabetes, but we have not yet found very efficient ways," Guo says.

One approach is making China's schoolchildren exercise at least an hour a day. Far more must be done, says Barry Popkin, a professor of nutrition and director of the Obesity Center at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, who authored a July study about China's growing obesity.

"The Chinese government is not taking this crisis as seriously as (it) should be," he says. "They have not thought through how debilitating the huge proportion of people with diabetes and hypertension will be on the next generation."

He says 6 million to 10 million adult Chinese become obese each year. "China must start prevention now, or fall into the same trap as the U.S. and Europe — spending on drugs to treat, instead of prevent, obesity," he says.

Acupuncture and weight loss

Jacky Zhang, 35, who works at a Beijing technology company, admits he was nervous the first time he tried acupuncture at the Orient Mingren Fat Reduction Center, a chain with outlets in the Chinese capital and other cities. He desperately wants to slim down from his 243 pounds.

"I began to gain weight in my late 20s. At that time I got married (and) no longer pay attention to my shape," he laughs. "I eat whatever I want and sit all day long because of my work."

Two weeks of acupuncture have persuaded him to persevere. "I hope it can work," he says.

An estimated 38% of U.S. adults now use some form of alternative medicine, according to a U.S. government survey published last week.

Some weight specialists remain skeptical. "I am not aware of any good science that shows acupuncture makes a big difference" to help weight loss, Colorado's Hill says.

Alonzo Bland, an American here to lose weight, has shed 250 pounds so far and wants to return home at 220 — a shadow of his former self.

He admits he was nervous about acupuncture. "I am not a fan of needles," he says. "But the first time I had acupuncture it was amazing. He credits the treatment with giving him energy for daily workouts.

"Traditional Chinese medicine can help people burn fat, suppress their appetite and increase the rate of metabolism," his doctor, Su Zhixin, says.

Calum MacLeod,

[amg]

Fast-Food near schools linked to obesity

Adolescents who go to school within a half-mile of a fast-food restaurant are more likely to be overweight or obese than kids whose schools are further away, new research suggests. Drs. Brennan Davis of Azusa Pacific University in Azusa, Calif., and Christopher Carpenter of the University of California at Irvine found that, "Overall, our patterns are consistent with the idea that fast food near schools affects students' eating habits, overweight and obesity," they conclude in a report in the American Journal of Public Health. Several studies have demonstrated that fast food restaurants are often clustered within walking distance of schools, but studies looking at whether this affects students' weight or eating habits have not found a link.

[amg]

McDonald's slashes China prices by up to 33 percent

BEIJING, Feb 5 (Reuters) - Mcdonald's Corp (MCD.N), the world's largest fast-food chain, has cut some prices by as much as a third in China where once booming economic growth has slumped amid the global financial crisis.

In what the company calls "the best ever value meal combination" in China, McDonald's cut about 40 percent of prices, the company said. Fifty percent of its products were now selling at the same level as 10 years ago or lower.

Popular items with a downsized price include Filet-O-Fish, Double Cheeseburger, McNuggets, McPuff and the new Mala Pork Burger. The Big Mac was not mentioned in a company statement.

A growing number of Chinese restaurants and shops are reducing prices in a bid to lure customers and lift lacklustre sales in a country where millions have been thrown out of work by the economic crisis.

Chief Executive Jim Skinner said late last year that the company was well positioned in the face of recession, because people would think twice about where to spend money when going out for food.[ID:nLD529044]

In China, one of the fastest growing markets for McDonald's, the number of customers had been stable, a company spokeswoman in Shanghai said.

The company also reaffirmed plans to open 175 restaurants and hire around 10,000 staff in China this year. Currently it operates 1,050 restaurants and hires more than 60,000 staff in China.

China's economic growth fell to 6.8 percent last quarter, dragging down the pace of expansion for all of 2008 to a seven-year low of 9.0 percent as the full force of the global financial crisis struck home.

Yum Brands Inc's (YUM.N), another U.S. restaurant operator, said on Wednesday its China sales had been "roughly in line to slightly below" expectations since early December. Its fourth-quarter same-store sales in China were up just 1 percent. [ID:nN04294312] (Reporting by Michael Wei; Editing by Nick Macfie)

[amg]

In China, appetite slows for Western fast food

Reporting from Shanghai -- Down an alley from a KFC, McDonald's and Pizza Hut in Shanghai, Li Hong sat inside a dingy little storefront that serves full-course dinners for a dollar.

Her tray was filled with cabbage, carrots, potatoes, a chicken leg and rice, plus soup. A Western fast-food meal would have cost her three times that much, said the young woman, who works as a sales clerk. "Why should I go there?" she said.

In the U.S., fast-food chains often thrive in tough times. But not so in China, where Western quick-service food isn't the cheapest stuff in town and, in target markets like Shanghai, there's too much competition. Plus, a growing number of consumers see it as unhealthful.

"Western fast food is still not cheap enough," said Yee Mei Chan, a group-account director at Millward Brown's office in Beijing.

In a recent survey, the marketing research firm found that 78% of Chinese consumers were feeling some effect from the global financial crisis. About half said they were likely to cut down on eating at Western fast-food restaurants.


That might help explain why Yum Brands Inc., China's largest restaurant chain with nearly 2,500 KFCs and 416 Pizza Huts, said same-store sales in the country were up just 1% in the fourth quarter compared with year-earlier growth of 17%.

In the U.S., Yum's same-store sales, an industry measure of branches open at least a year, rose 2% in the latest quarter, ended Dec. 27.

McDonald's Corp. doesn't report such figures for China, where it has about 1,050 stores. But Jeff Schwartz, head of China operations, said, "We had some softening at the latter part of 2008." He noted that sales rebounded in January, rising higher than a year before, but that also reflected an earlier Chinese New Year holiday.

Like many retailers in China, including Wal-Mart, McDonald's cut prices recently, saying it wanted to do its part to keep China's economy growing. Its new "value meals" cost $2.42, a saving of up to one-third for combos such as a double cheeseburger, medium-size French fries (or cup of corn) and a Coke.

Schwartz said he remained "very bullish" on China. McDonald's is on its way to opening 175 stores in China this year, he said, more than anywhere else.

Yum is also planning for another year of high growth in China, which has been increasingly driving the corporation's profits. And other food and beverage retailers, including Burger King, Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks and Cold Stone Creamery, are bulking up in China as well.

With rising affluence and changes in lifestyle, the pace of China's spending on eating out has been growing by double digits year after year. The China Cuisine Assn. estimates that sales surged 24% last year to $225 billion at the nation's 4 million eating and drinking establishments.

If Western fast-food diners are slipping a bit, it could be that they've "lost some of their freshness," said Xu Yunfei, the association's industry development director.

KFC, which opened its first store in China in 1987 and has since penetrated deep into the nation's heartland, still has a lot of cachet in rural areas, where its restaurants are often packed. But most foreign retailers in China have yet to enter such smaller markets inland, tending to focus instead on young consumers and the middle class in China's urban centers.

Yet once-booming coastal cities such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen are now reeling from a falloff in exports and industrial production. Even in Shanghai, with its large service economy, it isn't hard to find people who are battening down the hatches.

On a recent Friday evening, Wu Lei, 40, and her 11-year-old son were having dinner at a McDonald's in a northeast Shanghai neighborhood. Most of the seats in this two-story restaurant were taken, though plenty of students had only books and papers spread out on the tables.

Wu said she and her husband, both architectural designers, saw a 20% cut in pay between them in the last year because of a lack of work.

"I might come more if it's cheaper," she said, adding that she takes her son to McDonald's and KFC each once a week. On this evening the total tab was about $5.

Other customers at this branch and several others said lower prices wouldn't change their eating-out routine.

"It's fast food; it's not good for you," said a 30-year-old tech worker who identified himself by his English name, Alex Lu.

KFC in particular met with early success in China in part because consumers viewed it as cleaner and offering more-hygienic foods. In recent ads and promotional materials, KFC and McDonald's have been stressing good value, high quality and healthful lifestyles.

Still, more Chinese are showing interest in nutritional and dietary considerations, which could prove a challenge for purveyors of fast food. "I suspect it's more of a long-term trend," said Warren Liu, author of "KFC in China: Secret Recipe for Success."

In many other cases, consumers said they simply preferred Chinese food, including quick-service establishments, of which there's no shortage.

In Shanghai's northeast Yangpu District, an area of 23 square miles, research firm GeoPro counted 4,990 eating and drinking places. About 40% were quick-service, take-out eateries or shops.

"There's immense saturation," said Corbett Wall, GeoPro's China director.

And as the economy has weakened, Chinese fast-food operators too have been engaging in price wars, trying to undercut rivals.

Real Kungfu, a chain of 309 restaurants that uses an image of Bruce Lee in its logo, has introduced a lineup of "extra value meals" that includes rice, meat and vegetables, steamed egg, soybean milk and green-bean soup for about $2.58. Real Kungfu's president, Cai Dabiao, insisted it was a better deal than a Western alternative.

"Rice suits Chinese people better," he said.

don.lee@latimes.com