Sitting in a McDonald's in Beijing recently our attention was drawn to an overweight Chinese boy happily tucking into a Big Mac and fries.
The youngster quickly polished off his food and asked for more chips. His adoring parents, who were not eating any of this western junk themselves, obliged.
As proud as punch, they looked on as their single offspring munched away, a product of the one-child policy and part of the most indulged generation in Chinese history.
One of the things that hits you about China is that everyone is so maddeningly healthy looking. It is still unusual to see a very fat Chinese person.
However, China's dramatic economic opening in the last two decades has brought some very bad western eating habits.
Figures show that obesity among China's 300 million children is increasing at an annual rate of eight per cent. One in 10 urban children is now considered overweight.
The obesity problem has resulted in a boom this summer in "chubby camps", where overweight children go to shed excess pounds during their school holidays.
Parents have been flocking in recent weeks with their pudgy little emperor or empress to one such camp, Jin Duoba, in Shanghai where children as young as five are given military fatigues and T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan "Fat Camp".
They are put through their paces, kicking and punching the air, wriggling through tunnels, swinging across ponds on ropes and crawling beneath barbed wire under simulated fire.
The camp starts at 6 a.m. and the young fitness soldiers exercise throughout the day, even in the sweltering midday heat. Some children undergo just a one-day course; for others, it is a daily ordeal until they shed their excess weight.
Jin Duoba is one of the first camps in China to employ such tough techniques, and a spokesman predicted many similar facilities will be opened around China in the coming years as the legions of overweight children swell to chronic levels.
Chinese culture revolves around food and a well-fed baby is regarded as a sign of health and wealth. Parents are often guilty of encouraging overeating as they attempt to prove their affection for their youngster.
What has really contributed to China's child obesity problem is the proliferation of US-style fast food. There are more than 300 Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets and some 400 branches of McDonald's in China. It is almost impossible to get into a Pizza Hut in Beijing between the hours of 5 and 8 p.m. so packed are they with Chinese.
The fallout from the childhood obesity problem, according to experts, is a Chinese medical system burdened with millions of children suffering from the diseases of the middle-aged: high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, and diabetes.
Prof Bai Qingzhi of the Harbin Medical Sciences University in northern China warned recently that fat deposits accumulating on the bodies of children would cause huge problems in later life.
He said children who are 20 per cent above their normal weight could be considered obese. He claimed China's overweignt children are often more than 50 per cent over the average weight for their age.
Prof Bai said obesity-related diseases are now occurring in 90 per cent of overweight Chinese boys and 50 per cent of overweight Chinese girls.
Last month, 150 Chinese health and nutrition experts gathered in Beijing for a conference and warned that China is facing an obesity epidemic.
Up to 5 per cent of Chinese are now considered obese, more than double the number ten year ago. While the figures still compares favourably with an obesity rate of between 10 and 20 per cent in Europe and 30 per cent in the US, the rapid increase is causing alarm.
Health experts fear that China's 36 million cases of obesity linked diabetes could soar to more than 100 million over the next 15 years.
China's transition from a rural to increasingly westernised society is also likely to lead to heart ailments brought on by fatty diets, smoking and other factors, experts addressing the conference warned.
In 1978, shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese ate 7.7 kilograms of pork per person annually. By the mid 1990s this had increased almost three fold to 18.2 kilograms.
Consumption of other foods has also increased. People are eating 40 kilograms more grain a year now compared to twenty years ago and oil intake has increased six-fold in the same period.
The Vice-President of the Chinese Medical Association, Mr Jie Fu Huang, on the problem of obesity said: "The today of America will be the tomorrow of China."
Meanwhile, unless the trends shift, future generations of little emperors and empresses are facing a very western phenomenon . . . fighting the flab.
Miriamd@163bj.com