Guest Post: Why Are There So Few Fat People in France, and None in China?

I had not expected to do a second post on GLP-1 drugs or food.

I thought my post on Sunday would be a one-and-done, a short off-topic "Easy Sunday" diversion. After all, there is so much "news" happening.

But everybody eats, everybody observes one another, and everybody consciously and unconsciously absorbs an idea of what is a normal, reasonable weight. Jim Stodder wrote me saying that weight isn't about appetite. He said that Americans have grown larger because we have normalized being larger and we conform to that expectation.  

When this photo of comedian Jackie Gleason was taken in 1953, Gleason was noteworthy for being uniquely overweight. He would be less conspicuous now. Americans have changed what we think of as "normal." Bigger is OK now in the USA. But that isn't true world-wide.

Jim Stodder is a college classmate, an economist, and a retired professor. His guest post comment notes that his BMI (body mass index) is under 30, meaning that he is not obese, as defined by the medical establishment's charts on healthy weights.

Stodder

Guest Post by Jim Stodder

Why Are There So Few Fat People in France, and None in China? 

OK, it’s not literally true that there are zero fat people in China, but you could get that impression walking around Shanghai. From 2006 to 2013, I taught economics in China every summer, usually in Shanghai. Shanghai is sometimes called the New York of China. Besides finance and skyscrapers, they both have subways with would-be entertainers.

I took the fast ,modern subway to Fudan University every day, and there was sometimes a guy who billed himself as “The Fat Man”, a stand-up comic in both languages. He gave me his card, English on one side.

I didn’t think he was too funny. Another thing I didn’t think, at all, was that he was fat. This guy was about 5’8”, maybe 180 pounds. No one, I mean no one in the U.S. would look at this guy and think “fat.” “Stout,” maybe. I must have passed several thousand people on Shanghai’s bustling streets and I never saw anyone fat by U.S. standards

Look at World Health Organization (WHO) data in a map on Wikimedia Commons: Countries are ranked by obesity, defined as the percentage of adults with a body-mass index over 30. The data are here.

There are three patches of dark-green – fewer than 10 percent of adults have a BMI of 30 or more: Central Africa – where they don’t get enough to eat, France – where they’re slaves to fashion, and a big swath of South and East Asia, from India to Japan. So what’s going on there?

Being on the brink of starvation is one thing, but France, Japan, and South Korea are rich countries, and they eat very well – better than Americans, many would say -- just not as much. Bear in mind, this WHO data is from 2022, so well before the advent of Ozempic, WeGovy, etc.

Aside from brute starvation, I’d say it’s a strong awareness of one’s social image. One can be a fashionista, as in Paris or Hollywood. But it doesn’t have to be just vanity. In a more traditional society, it was a norm of not looking greedy, of not taking more than your share. Like that old Bolshevik poster with the fat capitalist in a tuxedo and top-hat.

An old way of distinguishing Asian cultures is to call East Asia a “shame” culture and Western Europe a “guilt” culture. The idea is that in the first, social values are enforced collectively, while in the second enforcement is internalized.

Social pressure and the need to cut a good figure can also apply in the West. It’s hard to imagine a truly fat U.S. president, and the U.S. has not had one since William Howard Taft. But outside of Hollywood, the C-Suite, or politics (Hollywood for plain people), what works for most people? A firm consciousness of the social consensus, which is much more important in East-Asian societies -- ones I will call Buddhist-influenced. A Japanese friend of mine says it’s like rice -- Americans like their kernels firm and individually separate. In Japan they like them soft and sticking together.

I’ve made a list of 14 countries with a Buddhist majority or strongly Buddhist-influenced by history: Bhutan, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. India is only one percent Buddhist today, but Buddhism was born and flourished there, with thousands of monasteries. Call these countries post-Buddhist.

Here are some stats, using the same WHO source as that map. For those 14 Buddhist-Influenced countries, the average share of population with a BMI over 30 is just under 11 percent. For all the rest, the average is over 23 percent.The highest obesity rate among the Buddhist-influenced was 24.3 for Mongolia. For the rest, the world highest was American Samoa, at 75.2 percent. (The U.S. clocks in at 42 percent.)

The Japanese say one should build the habit of putting down the fork when “80-percent-full.” They even have a saying for it, “hara hachi bu” – word for word, that’s “belly eight parts.” I try to follow this rule, and my BMI is under 30. One can cultivate an aesthetic sense, the good feeling of being more "on your toes" rather than stuffed and ready to sleep.

This is one race where America is in close to last pace. Look at those bright red countries on the map. GLP-1 drugs are great, and they seem to have healthy side-effects. But it’s clearly possible to do it free-style, and there are huge successful cultures where most people do -- eating well and enjoying their food, but with restraint and the satisfaction of looking and feeling good.

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