Spoilt For Choice

Packaged food is fast replacing balanced diet among schoolchildren, especially in urban India, warns the latest study by Centre for Science and Environment

- Sonam Taneja, Amit Khurana

OUR SCHOOLCHILDREN are increasingly becoming overweight or obese. In the absence of a consolidated study, certain sporadic surveys conducted in different parts of India over the past decade suggest that 2.914.3 per cent children in the country could be obese and 1.5-24 per cent overweight. The problem has particularly assumed a public health concern in urban areas. A 2011 study by Jehangir Hospital in Pune and UCL Institute of Child Health, London, shows that 30 per cent of children living in urban areas are obese or overweight. In a 2017 study published in the Indian Journal of Public Health health experts in Gujarat say 33 per cent of children studying in affluent schools of Rajkot are obese or overweight.

Childhood obesity is a matter of serious concern because children who are overweight or obese grow up to be overweight or obese adults, says Aanuja Agarwala, dietician at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi. Besides, child hood obesity is also a forerunner of metabolic syndrome, poor physical health, respiratory problems and non-communicable diseases (NCDS) like hypertension and glucose intolerance (type-II diabetes). NCDS typically occur later in life. Till three decades ago, they were not a paeditrician’s concern. But they are now beginning to appear among children, says Rekha Harish, head of paediatrics department, Government Medical College, Jammu.