Not a chubby figure

FOR THE FIRST time, obesity surpassed underweight as the more prevalent form of malnutrition in 2025, affecting 1 in 10 — or 188 million — school-aged children and adolescents, and placing them at risk of life-threatening diseases, Unicef warned in a report in September last year.

- SREYA DEB

In India, the situation is equally concerning, if not more, as the country now ranks second globally for children who are overweight and living with obesity, only after China and beating the US and other Western nations, according to the World Obesity Atlas 2026. There has been a rapid growth in the number of children becoming overweight and living with obesity in the past 20 years, as per Dr Srirangam Vamshi, endocrinologist at the Apollo Sugar Clinic in Hyderabad. “Childhood obesity is becoming a growing public health concern in India,” he adds.

An expanding risk

According to Dr Deepika Singhal, director of pediatrics and neurology at Yatharth Super Specialty Hospital, Greater Noida (West), there are 33 million children in India who are overweight and living with obesity today.

“This works out to an overall prevalence of 9% among children below the age of 20 years. This is projected to grow annually by 6.2%,” she says, adding that by 2035, the prevalence of overweight and obesity in Indian children will rise to 25%. “In day-to-day practice, we are now more frequently dealing with overweight children, many of whom are developing early signs of lifestyle-related diseases,” she says, adding, “Urban children have dramatically higher rates of obesity than their rural counterparts.” However, “the trend that is even more worrying is that obesity is now creeping into semi-urban and rural areas, reflecting among all class groups”, adds Dr Singhal.