China Scaring Kids Out of Fast Food Chains?

My friend Carlie, a dietitian who works and lives in Beijing, recently contributed to this article online, and I thought I just had to share. The article was about a recent ad campaign that China launched to "scare kids out of fast food chains."

According to the article, the "Chinese are already facing an obesity problem, with one in six, or 215 million people, overweight or obese."

In Carlie's blog post, she writes,

"The 2002 China Health and Nutrition Survey estimated that around 215 million Chinese people were overweight or obese. The rate of this increase is particularly eye-opening - from 1992 to 2002 the prevalence of overweight adults increased by nearly 40% and that of obesity doubled. And in rural areas, where 60% of the population lives, it went up two to three-fold over just 10 years."

It's a good thing that China is trying to combat obesity before it gets out of control (like the Americans). Some people speculate that the ad campaign is part of a nationalistic move, trying to deter the Chinese from eating at Burger King (apparently, there's a lot of hype surrounding the first store opening in Beijing) and driving them to eat at local places (although how do you explain the popularity of KFC then?).

Anyway, the point of this blog post is not about the motives behind the authorities, but rather how ridiculously silly the ads look.

Scorpion burger?

Glass in the chocolate sauce...needles in the biscuit?

Mines in the ground?

Hah, well, I don't find any of these ads scary at all. In fact, I think they're pretty comical and I spent 10 minutes laughing at these ads the other day. Maybe it's a cultural thing, but it's going to take more than a scorpion burger to scare me. Then again, as my friend politely pointed out, I'm not a kid anymore.