India heading towards obesity epidemic? Lancet Study warns country could have over 440 million overweight people by...

By 2050, India could have over 440 million obese and overweight people, a global analysis published in The Lancet journal has estimated. The number of overweight and obese adults by mid-century in India (218 million men and 231 million women) could be the second highest in the world, after China, with the US, Brazil, and Nigeria expected to rank third, fourth, and fifth, respectively, the findings by an international team of researchers reveal.

These researchers, including those from the Indian Council of Medical Research, collaborated for the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Study 2021. As per the study, already almost half the world's adults -- a billion men and over a billion women aged 25 years and above -- were overweight and obese in 2021. In India, the numbers were over nearly 180 million -- 81 million men and 98 million women.

However, by 2050, this number globally could rise to nearly 3.8 billion -- 1.8 billion men and 1.9 billion women -- "over half of the likely global adult population at that time", the authors said.

"While China, India, and the USA will continue to constitute a large proportion of the global population with overweight and obesity, the number in the sub-Saharan Africa super-region is forecasted to increase by 254.8 percent," they wrote.

The researchers also estimated that about 16 million boys and over 14 million girls in India, aged 5-14 years, could be overweight and obese by 2050, making it the world's second highest after China.

However, in the 15-24 age group, the world's highest burden could come from India, with over 22 million men and nearly 17 million women in the country suffering from this health crisis in 2050.

Lead author Emmanuela Gakidou, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington, US, which coordinates the GBD study, said, "The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental societal failure." 

The study, the "most comprehensive global analysis to date", could help governments and the public health community "identify priority populations experiencing the greatest burdens of obesity who require immediate intervention and treatment, and those that remain predominantly overweight and should be primarily targeted with prevention strategies", Gakidou said.

The latest estimates come against the backdrop of Prime Minister Narendra Modi making a strong pitch for combating obesity in his monthly Mann Ki Baat radio broadcast on February 23.

Obesity will have to be dealt with to be a fit and healthy nation, he said. Obesity, a body mass index (BMI) of over 30, is known to have wide-ranging effects, including raising one's risk of metabolic and heart disease. It can also impact one's bone health and fertility, and increase cancer risk.

However, experts recently called for a more nuanced approach to measuring obesity.

In January, authors of a Lancet Commission report urged an overhaul of how obesity is diagnosed and called for a new method that looked at aspects such as waist circumference or waist-to-hip ratio, in addition to BMI.

BMI is not an honest measure of health or disease and can thus result in a wrong diagnosis, they said. The team suggested two new categories for diagnosing obesity, which are "objective measures" of illness in an individual -- 'clinical obesity' and 'pre-clinical obesity'.

While clinical obesity refers to a chronic, or persistent, condition because of an obesity-related organ dysfunction, pre-clinical obesity is related to an increased health risk without illness, they explained.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DNA staff and is published from PTI)