Better nutrition made Chinese people grow taller in the past decade or so, and boosted women more than men, but the change of diet also made more people overweight and even obese, a national health survey has found.
The survey on nutrition and non-communicable diseases, conducted by the National Health and Family Planning Commission, found nutrition had generally improved in the decade between 2002 and 2012 with ample intake of protein, fat and carbohydrate. As a result, the average height of adult men grew 0.4cm to 167.1cm, while that of women grew an average 0.7cm to 155.8cm in the decade.
Children from six to 17 years old recorded even more significant growth. In urban areas, boys were an average 2.3cm taller and girls an average 1.8cm taller. Their rural counterparts grew 4.1cm and 3.5cm, respectively.
Ma Guansheng, a professor at Peking University's Department of Nutrition and Food Hygiene, said rural children were shorter in 2012 than urban counterparts, despite the bigger increases. Better nutrition also contributed to a drop in anaemia.
But Chang Jile, an official with the commission, said that malnutrition was still a problem.
The population had also grown fatter. More than one-tenth of adults were obese in 2012, up 4.8 percentage points from 2002.
