A SLIMMING craze is sweeping across Asia, where some women's desire for ever thinner bodies has already cost them their lives.

In Japan, five people have died and more than 500 have fallen ill after taking diet pills made in China. In Singapore, a slimming product, also from China, was linked to sickness in at least a dozen women and one death.

Despite the dangers, newspapers, magazines, televisions and train stations across the region are flooded with advertisements for slimming centres that guarantee weight loss in days without dieting or exercise.

"Most of the people who buy diet products don't appear to be overweight," said Kenichi Naoi, whose family owns a drugstore in central Tokyo that stocks several imported diet aids.

"But when you see models on television and in magazines, they are so thin. Their bodies appear to be becoming the standard."

That standard may be virtually unattainable, and unhealthy.

"Definitely, appearances count. And the slimmer you are, the more cool you look," said a 30-year-old office worker in Tokyo, who identified herself as Yoshie. "Especially for women."

Social pressure

In Singapore, waif-like women stroll around shopping malls in trendy clothes suggesting they are parading their looks rather than just shopping.

Young women can often be heard complaining to their friends about putting on weight. The Singaporean man's preference for svelte beauties has only added to the problem.

"They like their women slim," said Manoj Sharma, a 29-year-old marketing communications director in Singapore.

In India, leading Bombay cosmetic surgeon Vijay Sharma, whose client list includes top Bollywood stars, says that business is booming.

"I'm seeing a phenomenal growth in Indian men and women opting for different procedures to look thin and beautiful," said Sharma. "With globalization and media hype, people are pressurized to maintain a great figure," Sharma said.

Former Miss World Yukta Mookhey, 23, who won her title three years ago, says there's too much emphasis on staying thin.

"Dieting too much kills you from inside," said Mookhey, who said the constant effort to stay slim left her weak, frustrated and miserable.

Worse still, many slimmers shun exercise and appropriate diet control, resorting instead to pills and other quick fixes.

"To drink something, and not have to do anything else, like cutting back on food or getting exercise, and still lose weight - well, it was really nice," said Yoshie in Tokyo, who used to take Chinese diet pills.

But slimming pills and schemes don't come cheap. Yoshie paid 3,000 yen (US$25.73) for a bottle of 120 pills.

In Hong Kong, one slimming centre charges HK$8,000-30,000 (US$1,026-3,846) for a course lasting from four to six weeks.

Lethargy, nausea

While Yoshie lost weight rapidly, she soon became lethargic and felt nauseous to the point where she could not go to work.

US health officials last week warned Americans about two potentially deadly Chinese weight-loss pills that may contain fenfluramine, a diet drug pulled from the US market after it was linked to heart problems.

The Food and Drug Administration said it issued the alert about the Chinese products, Chaso (Jianfei) Diet Capsules and Chaso Genpi, because people had died recently in Japan after using them.

A number of the products were found to contain fenfluramine, while others contained thyroid hormones.

In their desire to shed weight, some women have also developed potentially fatal eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia.

Anorexics, often young women with emotional and social problems, starve themselves, while bulimics are trapped in cycles of bingeing and purging.

In Singapore, for example, some 45,000 Singaporean women could be suffering from the potentially fatal disorders, according Dr Lee Ee Lian, head of the Eating Disorder Clinic at the Institute of Mental Health.

Many women are going to slimming clubs that give clients pills to take or put chemicals on their body.

"Stupid, foolish rich women willing to pay any amount think they can lie down on a couch and lose weight," said Ramma Bans, a leading Indian fitness expert whose proteges have won top beauty pageants, including Miss Universe and Miss World.

Bans, who has been a fitness trainer for over 40 years, said that nearly every day she had a string of clients who had suffered side-effects from various quick-fix dieting methods.

"Frauds and scamsters are having a field day," said Bans.

(Shanghai Star August 29, 2002)