Health-conscious Chinese look to fit-friendly foods

Zhang Lu, a 31-year-old fitness enthusiast, has started eschewing her favorite steamed buns and salty foods to embrace light meals.

She eats one egg and a bowl of edible corm and purple yam porridge for breakfast, chicken breast with vegetable salad for lunch, and drinks a cup of lemon water with fiber-rich chia seeds in the afternoon.

"I don't feel hungry the whole day," says Zhang, who works at a power company in Jinan, East China's Shandong province.

To shed excess weight and save time, a growing number of young Chinese like Zhang have turned to light diets, featuring meals with fewer calories, lower fat and minimal sugar, but higher fiber.

According to a report published by the Chinese Nutrition Society, around 95 percent of the surveyed people say they eat light meals at least once a week, and fitness enthusiasts and dieters account for the largest proportion of light food consumers.

Data released by major Chinese food delivery platform Meituan Waimai showed that in the second half of 2020, the number of orders for light food increased by 50 percent and restaurants offering such meals on the platform grew by 27 percent year-on-year.

Smelling a business opportunity, many companies have entered the healthy-diet industry. More than 3,000 enterprises related to light foods and meal replacement were established in China last year, according to the database query platform tianyancha.com.

Sharkfit, a China-based fitness food brand established in 2017, became all the rage among young consumers with its star product－instant chicken breast.

"Chicken breast is high in protein and low in calories. We have explored various recipes with a good taste and low fat to suit the palate of fitness enthusiasts and consumers who want to stay fit," says Gao Ning, co-founder of Sharkfit.

With a diverse product portfolio ranging from instant chicken breast to other kinds of meat, staple food substitutes, snacks and seasoning, Sharkfit notched up 210 million yuan ($32.5 million) in sales in 2020, and its sales are expected to exceed 700 million yuan this year.

Many Chinese are troubled with issues such as obesity and high blood pressure, considered by some as "diseases of affluence" and a result of increased societal wealth, given that the quality of life for many has greatly improved in recent decades.

According to an official report on nutrition and chronic diseases among Chinese people published last year, overweight and obesity rates among those aged 18 and above are 34.3 percent and 16.4 percent, respectively.

"Chinese people no longer worry about not having enough food. Rather, they want to have a delicious and healthy diet," says Gao.

The meal replacement market in China is expected to reach a value of 120 billion yuan in 2022, statistics from global market research firm Euromonitor International show.

Currently, most consumers of Sharkfit come from economically developed places, such as Beijing, the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta regions.

"With improvement in the quality of life and health awareness in second- and third-tier cities, we see a lot of room for business expansion in these areas," Gao says.