Lose weight and earn credits: Chinese university students on course to trim down
Students graded on how much they shed during the year-long programme of exercise and controlled diet
A university in eastern China is offering an accredited weight-loss course in an attempt to tackle obesity on campus.
Fifty students have enrolled in the year-long course at Nanjing Agriculture University in Jiangsu province and were being encouraged to lose weight through a combination of regular exercise and diet control, Jiangsu Television reported.
Sixty per cent of each student’s grade would be determined by how much weight they lost, with full marks in the section if they could shed 7 per cent of their original weight, the report said.
Lecturer Zhou Quanfu said most overweight students did not exercise on their own because they thought it was pointless.
“So to motivate them we have designed the course to have their weight loss directly linked to their marks,” Zhou was quoted as saying.