More than 200 million people around the world suffer from obesity, and 85 million of those people come from China. Increasing mass of adipose tissue and the secretion of pathogenetic products from enlarged fat cells, obesity threatens to inundate health care resources by increasing the incidence of diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and cancer. The combined effect of these pathogenetic consequences of increased obesity is an increased risk of shortened life expectancy.1In order to lose weight, many turn to popular meal replacement products, which are advertised to be effective in weight control. A meal replacement is a drink, bar, soup, etc. intended as a substitute for a solid food, usually with controlled quantities of calories and nutrients. Some drinks come in powdered form or pre-mixed health shakes that can be cheaper than solid foods with identical health qualities. Medically prescribed meal replacement drinks include the body's necessary vitamins and minerals.2 However, the question is: are they really as healthy as marketed?

It is critical to analyze the current market of meal replacement in China to best answer the above question. Euromonitor International suggests that China's meal replacement market is expected to reach USD20 billion by 2022 with a compound annual growth rate of 68%. While over 50% of Chinese adults are overweight , many with trouble controlling what they eat turn to meal replacement food for help (China’s Health Commission, YEAR). 3

China's current market of meal replacement indicate growing investment in meal replacement as a weight-loss strategy. Statistics show that in the first quarter of 2022, the sales volume of meal replacement food on an e-commerce platform was 20.3 million yuan, a sharp increase of about 17 times year-on-year.4

As the industry caught an upward trend, businesses mushroomed. The number of companies in China's meal replacement industry doubled from 1,082 in 2016 to 2,350 in 2020. From 2019 to 2020, well-known tea beverage enterprises Master Kong, Hi Tea, Nestle and Pepsi had successively entered the market of meal replacement, offering meal replacement shakes with a variety of flavors.

Meal replacement is not necessarily the magic bullet solution to obesity that it seems, though. Although the replacement food marketing advertises health features such as zero calories and no sugar, the marketing tends to exaggerate the weight-reducing effects. In 2021, a China Daily report involving more than 200 common meal replacement products on the market stated that half of the products were found to be substandard during spot check, which may impose long-term health hazards on consumers.

In reality, the “healthy” replacement is not healthy and does not achieve the intended result. Qualified meal replacement food needs to cater to a standard and maintain a reasonable and balanced nutrition. However, many products on the market are not up to this requirement. Some  plain multigrain powders made with soybean turn out to be inferior, which may harm consumers’ health if taken in for a long time. Chinese Nutrition Society, a government organization, released an industry standard in 2019, which failed to place meal replacement food in a special product category. As a result, there is no mandatory standard for meal replacements, and products have a low threshold.

Leading brands have put artificial ingredients that are inconsistent with the packaging and advertising. WonderLab and Herbalife utilize ucralose, an untested artificial sweetener that may release toxic hloropropane, to replace saccharose, but both brands fail to mention such ingredient in their marketing. The nutrients contained in meal replacement food, such as vitamins, calcium, and iron, are relatively limited. For instance, the meal replacement shakes provided by Shengmu, a popular food brand, have got only 10% protein (much less than 25% according to the standard) and no vitamin B and B2 at all. Consequently, long-term consumption of a single type of meal replacement food tends to cause malnutrition. In 2019, a Chinese teenage girl who only had meal replacements and water for months ended up in the hospital, suffering from acute liver and renal failure. The symptoms of fatigue, stomach upsets, and hair loss are also common among customers.  Few dieters can strictly stick to meal replacement plans. Consumers often take overly extra meals due to insufficient nutrition, further reducing weight-loss effects.Public media and healthcare professionals have already called attention to the meal replacement food industry, as irresponsible production and marketing of meal replacements may lead to a potential public health crisis in China.

The most effective way of regulating the flood of unqualified meal replacement food is to inform the public of the harms they bring. Few would spend money on those products as soon as they realize the shortcomings. The Chinese government must be swift in its response to this growing threat.. The international food organization has already issued a series of strict requirements on the quality and usage of meal replacement food, and that serves well for the Chinese government which is still on its way to develop a proper law. The government should require that the energy value, nutritional composition and content, label and labeling of meal substitute products be clearly stipulated on food items, so as to provide legal criteria for the production and operation of enterprises. At present, the government has only given out advice for the meal replacement industry. Therefore, the meal replacement industry is not legally required to follow this advice. Clearly, this governmental action  is insufficient in removing unqualified products from the market.

Bibliography:

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