Obesity affecting all age groups, dietary reforms needed

Obesity is rising at an alarming rate and is today a major public health challenge in India, said the Economic Survey as it emphasised focusing on the intake of the right nutrition in their diets and treating dietary reforms as a public health priority.

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Driven by unhealthy diets, lifestyle changes, including sedentary lifestyles, increased consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs), and environmental factors, obesity is affecting people across all age groups and increasing the risk of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension, impacting both urban and rural populations, said the survey tabled in Parliament on Thursday.

The 2019-21 National Family Health Survey (NFHS) reports that 24 per cent of Indian women and 23 per cent of Indian men are overweight or obese. Among women aged 15-49 years, 6.4 per cent are obese, and among men, 4 per cent are obese, the report said. More troubling still, the prevalence of excess weight among children under five has risen from 2.1 per cent in 2015-16 to 3.4 per cent in 2019-21. According to esti-