India has long topped the list of countries with the highest number of malnourished children in the world. It’s now increasingly also reporting alarming levels of childhood obesity which, experts say, could take on the form of an epidemic if not tackled urgently.
When 14-year-old Mihir Jain first rolled into Delhi’s Max Hospital in 2017 in his wheelchair to consult Dr Pradeep Chowbey, the bariatric surgeon said he “couldn’t believe my eyes”.
“Mihir was super-super obese, he couldn’t stand properly and he wasn’t able to open his eyes as his face was fluffy. He weighed 237kg (523lbs) and his body mass index (BMI) was 92.” According to the World Health Organization (WHO), a BMI of 25 or above is considered overweight.
After weeks of treatment and a gastric bypass surgery in the summer of 2018, Mihir’s weight came down to 165kg.
At the time, Mihir was described as the “world’s heaviest teen” – the label could be an exaggeration, but India is home to an estimated 18 million overweight and obese children and their number is rising daily.
The latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5, conducted in 2019-21), the most comprehensive household survey of health and social indicators by the government, found that 3.4% of children under five are now overweight compared with 2.1% in 2015-16.
On the face of it, the numbers seem small, but Dr Arjan de Wagt, chief of nutrition at Unicef in India, says that “even a very small percentage can mean very large numbers” because of the size of the Indian population.
According to Unicef’s World Obesity Atlas for 2022, India is predicted to have more than 27 million obese children, representing one in 10 children globally, by 2030. It ranks 99th on the list of 183 countries in terms of preparedness to deal with obesity and the economic impact of overweight and obesity is expected to rise from $23bn in 2109 to a whopping $479bn by 2060.
“We are staring at a massive problem of childhood obesity in India,” says Dr de Wagt. “And because the behaviour that starts obesity generally starts in childhood, obese children grow up to be obese adults.”