Nutrition experts in Beijing urged the Chinese people to fine-tune their diet structure by eating more vegetable and fruit and taking in less salt and sweet food, the Legal Evening News reported.

Although the intake of salt is becoming less, the diet habit of Chinese people still fails to meet the "less-salt flavor" standard proposed by the World Health Organization (WHO), the paper said, citing a diet and nutrition report released by the China Association of Nutrition (CAN).

The report, the first of its kind, was based on a series of investigations of nutrition and health conditions between 1989 and 2002.

He Yuna, an associate research fellow with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CCDCP), said that the ratio of energy taken in from meat by Chinese residents rose from 15.2 percent in 1992 to 19.2 percent in 2002.

The intake of meat, including pork, beef and mutton, has been doubled worldwide in the 1961-2000 period, but the amount of meat taken in by Chinese people increased 10 times in the period, US nutrition expert Poplin was cited as saying.

Chinese urban residents consumed 80.1 grams of fruits and 319.3 grams of vegetable per day in 1992, but the consumption of the two dropped to 69.3 and 251.9 grams respectively in 2002, He Yuna said.

Chinese residents now consume less salt with the intake of salt dropping to 12 grams in 2002 from 14 grams in 1992. But they take too much sweet food including cakes, fruit juice and ice-cream, He said.

The most outstanding diet problem of the Chinese people is that they take too much meat and fat but less cereals, which is regarded as "irrational", Zhai Fengying was quoted as saying.

"Too much meat and fat will lead to obesity which is closely related with many chronic diseases," she added.

Over the past decade, the number of high blood pressure patients with age above 18 has increased by 31 percent, the paper said.

To keep fit, Chinese nutrition experts urge people to curb the intake of pork and salt, eat more poultry meat, vegetable and fruit and do more exercise.

(Xinhua News Agency July 27, 2005)