[ad_1]
India has seen a steady rise in obesity levels (not only in adults but also in children) over the past 32 years. At the same time, the prevalence of malnutrition also remains high in the country. As a result, India has become one of the countries with a high “double burden”. according to a new Lancet studywhich examined malnutrition trends around the world over the past 32 years.
The study, published on Thursday (February 29), attributed the importance of malnutrition and obesity to a lack of access to nutritious and affordable food. While lack of access to food can lead to malnutrition, increased access to processed foods high in fat, salt and sugar has increased obesity, the study added.
What are the parameters of obesity and underweight?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), obesity is an abnormal or excessive accumulation of fat that poses health risks.
Adults (anyone over the age of 20) are considered obese if they have a body mass index (BMI) of 30 kg/m2 or more. BMI is a person’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of their height in meters, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. School-age children and adolescents (anyone between 5 and 19 years old) are considered obese if their BMI is more than two standard deviations above the mean.
Underweight is one of the four major subforms of malnutrition. An adult is considered underweight if their BMI is less than 18 kg/m2. School-age children and adolescents are considered underweight if their BMI is less than two standard deviations below the mean.
What does the data say about India?
Obesity in women has skyrocketed in the last three decades: it increased from 1.2% in 1990 to 9.8% in 2022, according to the study. In 2022, there were 44 million women living with obesity. Meanwhile, obesity in men increased 4.9 percentage points over the same period, with 26 million men living with obesity in 2022.
Notably, there has also been a significant increase in childhood obesity. There has been an increase of 3 percentage points in girls and 3.7 percentage points in boys over the 32 years the study examined. In 2022, 3.1% of girls and 3.9% of boys were obese. In other words, while 0.2 million boys and 0.2 million girls were obese in 1990, 7.3 million boys and 5.2 million girls were obese in 2022.
Despite a significant decline, the prevalence of underweight and thinness remains high across all genders and age groups. The study found that 13.7% of women and 12.5% of men were underweight. Thinness (a measure of underweight in children) among Indian girls was found to be the highest in the world, with a prevalence of 20.3%. And it was the second highest among Indian children, with a prevalence of 21.7%.
Why are there more obese women than men?
speaking to The Indian ExpressDr. V Mohan, one of the authors of the Indian study, said: “Women are more likely to gain weight because most of them do not have
access or time for physical activities such as walks or gyms. They are also likely to put the family’s nutrition before their own. They are also likely to get fewer hours of adequate sleep, waking up first and going to bed last.”
Dr Mohan added that if central obesity were taken into account, obesity in women would reach 40-50% in many parts of the country. Central obesity, a better predictor of future risk of diseases such as diabetes and hypertension, is an excessive accumulation of fat in the abdominal area.
How do socioeconomic conditions affect obesity and malnutrition?
Dr. Mohan explained that obesity is no longer the disease of the rich in India. He said: “Eating junk food is cheaper and easier. For example, the cost of samosas and pakoras available at roadside shacks is less than that of fruits and vegetables. While it is not nutritious, it is tastier. It’s the same as in the West, where a McDonald’s hamburger costs, say, a dollar, but fresh vegetables cost much more. This has led to a rise in obesity even among the poor, especially in more prosperous states like Tamil Nadu, Punjab and Goa.”
While it affects more people, there remains a divide between rural and urban areas when it comes to obesity. An analysis of last year’s NFHS-5 data shows that the prevalence of obesity was 31.7% in urban women and 19% in rural women. It was 28.6% among urban men and 18.8% among rural men.
Malnutrition persists in extremely remote and rural areas of the poorest states, where access to any type of food is low. “Malnutrition is prevalent in extremely poor populations in states like Bihar, Jharkhand or Odisha, where people can eat only one meal a day,” said Dr Mohan.
What are the impacts of obesity and malnutrition?
The health consequences of obesity are obvious. An increase in obesity, especially in children, is likely to lead to an increase in diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, heart attacks and strokes. However, the effect of malnutrition is not so obvious.
Dr Mohan said malnutrition is likely to increase the burden of non-communicable diseases. “There is a well-known hypothesis that babies born small are likely to have smaller organs and vessels. They have catch-up growth later in life, but their bodies are less likely to adjust to increases in nutrition, making them more likely to suffer from lifestyle diseases. So when a healthy weight baby and an underweight baby become obese later in life, the risk of diabetes or other diseases is much higher in the underweight baby,” he said.
Dr. Mohan explained that this has been observed even in famines, where the rate of diseases such as diabetes shoots up ten to fifteen years later.
What needs to be done?
According to the study, obesity and underweight should not be considered in isolation. “Because the transition between underweight and obesity can occur quickly, leaving your combined burden unchanged or more so. “It proposes that the focus should be on programs that improve healthy nutrition, such as targeted cash transfers, food assistance in the form of subsidies or vouchers for healthy foods, free healthy school meals, and primary care-based nutrition interventions,” the study says. .
In addition to ensuring food security, the study also mentioned that there is an urgent need to support weight loss in people with obesity. “Prevention and management are especially important because the age of onset of obesity has decreased, increasing the duration of exposure. The challenge is to make healthy foods affordable and accessible,” the study says.
Given the boom in the market for drugs to treat obesity, the study adds: “The new pharmacological treatment of obesity, although promising, will probably have a low impact globally in the short term, due to the high cost and lack of results generalizable clinical findings”. guidelines.”