Overall in 2021, 180 million Indians were either overweight or obese, second only to China, where this number stood at 402 million, the report has said. It estimates that for India, this figure will rise to 450 million in 2050, marking a rise of 150 percent.
The new analysis estimated the prevalence of overweight and obesity for children and young adolescents (aged 5-14 years), older adolescents (aged 15-24 years), and adults (aged 25 and older), in 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2021 with forecasts from 2022 to 2050, assuming continuation of past trends and patterns, as well as policies and interventions. It used up to 1,350 unique data sources, including all major multi-country and national survey data.
The study used body mass index (BMI) for adults—widely used to track current global trends. For individuals older than 18 years, overweight was defined as a BMI of 25 kg/m² to less than 30 kg/m², and obesity was defined as a BMI of 30 kg/m² or higher.
For individuals younger than 18 years, the definitions were based on International Obesity Task Force criteria, which calculate overweight, obese and underweight based on percentiles.
The report estimates that overweight and obesity rates in adults (25 or older), and children and adolescents (5-24 years), more than doubled over the past three decades (1990-2021), affecting 2.11 billion adults and 493 million young people worldwide in 2021.
Without urgent policy reform and action, around 60 percent of adults (3.8 billion), and a third (31 percent) of all children and adolescents (746 million), are estimated to be living with either overweight or obesity by 2050, the report shows.
“The unprecedented global epidemic of overweight and obesity is a profound tragedy and a monumental s
ocietal failure,” said lead author Professor Emmanuela Gakidou from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), University of Washington in a statement.
“Governments and the public health community can use our country-specific estimates on the stage, timing, and speed of current and forecast transitions in weight to 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.”
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Looming crisis
A largest-of-its-kind survey by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) and Madras Diabetes Research Foundation (MDRF), which was released in 2023, had said that 254 million Indians or 28.6 percent of the population had generalised obesity.
This survey put the number of people with abdominal obesity at 351 million or 39.5 percent of the population.
The ICMR-National Institute of Nutrition, in its dietary guidelines last year, had noted that there is a rising prevalence of overweight and obesity in several states, adding that 56.4 percent of India’s total disease burden is due to unhealthy diets with a major focus on carbohydrates.
These guidelines also underlined that the upsurge of highly processed food laden with sugar and fats, coupled with reduced physical activity and limited access to diverse foods, exacerbate the obesity/overweight problem in India.
The growing obesity epidemic has prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi, on a few occasions over the past few weeks, to make a pitch for efforts to curb the crisis. In his monthly radio broadcast last month, he called on people to reduce the use of cooking oils commonly found in unhealthy food. He had also previously urged people to adopt an active and healthy lifestyle in order to prevent obesity.
In January this year, a report by The Lancet, for the first time, had addressed obesity as a condition, saying that while clinical obesity should be seen and managed as a chronic disease associated with ongoing organ dysfunction due to obesity alone, preclinical obesity can be associated with a variable level of health risk, but no ongoing illness.
“The growing burden of obesity may have disastrous medical as well as economic impact for a developing country like India, and it is high time we adopt early interventions, dietary awareness and lifestyle modifications to avert the crisis,” a senior obesity researcher with the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) told ThePrint.
Younger generations gaining weight faster
The latest report notes that younger generations in most countries, including in India, are gaining weight faster than older ones, and obesity is occurring at earlier stages, increasing the risk of complications, such as Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, cardiovascular diseases, and multiple cancers at younger ages.
The statistics show that in 1990, only 4.6 million male kids aged 5-14 years were overweight or obese, but this number grew to 13.3 million in 2021. For the girls in the same age group, the number went from 4.5 million to 12.4 million during the time period.
For youths aged 15-24 years, the rise in the number has been even sharper. There were just four million overweight or obese male older adolescents in 1990, but by 2021, their number rose to 16.8 million. Among the girls in the age group, the number of those with the condition grew from 3.3 million to 13 million during the period.
In 1990, just 15.3 million Indian men above 25 years were obese or overweight, but their numbers grew to 85 million in 2021. For the women above 25, the number rose from 21.4 million to 98.4 million over the three decades.
Continuation of these trends would see global rates of overweight and obesity among adults rise from an estimated 43.4 percent in 2021 to around 57.4 percent for men in 2050, and from 46.7 percent to 60.3 percent for women, with the largest increases projected in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, driven by growing populations, the report adds.
This would mean an estimated 1.69 billion additional adults living with overweight or obesity by 2050 across the globe—raising the total to 3.8 billion, of whom 1.95 billion will have obesity.
The researchers have stressed that five-year action plans (2025-2030) are urgently required to curb the rise in obesity, and help form new goals and targets for the post-2030 Sustainable Development Goal-era for more concerted efforts to deliver comprehensive, transdisciplinary interventions tailored to each county’s unique socio-demographic, economic, environmental and commercial situation.
“Preventing obesity must be at the forefront of policies in low- and middle-income countries,” said co-lead author Dr Jessica Kerr of Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Australia. “Policy action in these regions must balance the challenges of overnutrition with undernutrition, and stunting with interventions ranging from support for nutritional diets and regulating ultra-processed foods, to promoting maternal and child health programmes that encourage pregnant women to follow a healthy diet and breastfeed.”
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)