Childhood obesity in Japan

Kyodo reports that the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare has decided to tackle the growing problem of childhood obesity by promoting healthy diets for children. The ministry will designate 10 districts in five prefectures as model areas where it will work to reduce the number of overweight children together with schools, households and communities.

The areas will be required to develop their own programs to fight the problem, officials said. Nine percent of fourth-graders were diagnosed as obese in 2003, up from 5.9% in 1982, while 10.8% of seventh-graders were, up from 7.3%, according to an education ministry survey.

Meanwhile, McDonald's introduced an ad campaign with a super-skinny, in my view anorexic female model to attract Japanese customers to its greasy burgers. Faced with concerns over obesity and the negative portrayal of its products in the film SuperSize Me, McDonald’s has questioned whether even its famous Golden Arches have become a liability, according to The Times. Although the 30,000 restaurants generated £13 billion last year, stronger revenues in the US have offset weak sales in Japan and other countries.

McDonald’s is actually losing money in Japan, and The Times continues:

The U.S. chain has had a rocky relationship with Japan since its arrival in 1971. Faced with accusations that hamburgers were inimical to the country’s diet, Den Fujita, the first McDonald’s Japan president, declared: “The reason Japanese people are so short and have yellow skins is because they have eaten nothing but fish and rice for 2,000 years. If we eat McDonald’s hamburgers and potatoes for a thousand years we will become taller, our skin become white and our hair blond.”

Obituary note: Den Fujita died of heart failure on April 21, 2004, two days after then McDonald's CEO, Jim Cantalupo died of a heart attack.