Overweight and obesity: The serious challenge faced by Chinese children and adolescents

According to the 2021 Children’s Blue Book: China Children’s Development Report, the incidence of overweight and obesity among school-age children in China was 15.5% in 2010, rising to 24.2% in 2019 and soaring to 29.4% in 2022 [4]. Available: https://pixabay.com/illustrations/remove-overweight-children-adults-1050369/. Besides potential physical health problems, psychological and behavioural ones are also prominent in obese children [16]. According to the 2017 Physical Activity and Fitness in China report, approximately two-thirds of the total 131 859 students aged 7-19 years failed to comply with the World Health Organization's recommendation of engaging in at least 60 minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity per day, while a third did not meet the guideline of limiting their screen time to less than two hours per day [24]. [...]they have less and less time to participate in extracurricular activities. [...]excessive academic pressure has become common as students strive to perform well in exams, leading to stress-induced obesity [25].