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The great Indian bulge is on an expansion spree

Bindu Shajan Perappadan

NEW DELHI: The unhealthy Indian bulge is on an expansion spree. Worse still, it is growing younger and stubbornly pronounced.

With 15 per cent youngsters at school and college checking in with an unhealthy waist circumference, Indians have pushed their way into the list of the top 10 most obese countries in the world with an unhealthy waist-hip ratio.

A distinction that has physicians and researchers worried, the prevalence of abdominal obesity is recorded at a high of 50 per cent in males and 65 per cent in females in this country. Also, the country is counted among those contributing to the global population of more than one billion overweight adults with at least a population of 300 million are counted among obese.

In fact so high is the fat and sugar consumption among Indians that the Capital itself presents a worrying picture. According to researchers, Delhiites alone consume 20 per cent more fat and 40 per cent more sugar now than they did 50 years ago.

With the current eating habits of Indians making them "more vulnerable to being overweight", Professor Anoop Misra of the Department of Internal Medicine at the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) warns: "The country is beginning to experience the burden of associated chronic diseases, particularly cardiovascular disease and adult onset diabetes."

The World Health Organisation estimates that the number of diabetes in India will go up from 19.4 million in 1995 to 57.2 million in 2025. The World Development Report showed an increase in the consumption of fat, saturated fat, sugar, salt, and vegetable ghee (clarified butter) in India.

This while a national survey by the National Nutrition Monitoring Bureau showed that a mere 5 per cent of the population consumes 40 per cent of the available fat. It is also reported that there are large differences in dietary diversity between urban and rural women, with urban women reporting regular consumption of milk, fruits and curd, and nearly double the frequency of eating eggs and meat compared with rural women.

"With the country facing the burden of lifestyle diseases the middle bulge especially in a younger age group isn't a very good sign. Our recent survey indicated that in the Capital alone 21 per cent children in public schools and 9 per cent children in government schools are obese. Also, interestingly the number of obese girl students was greater. This `obese' profile among students has resulted in children coming up with problems of diabetes and overweight.

We are worried that this population will grow up to become carriers of lifestyle diseases. While WHO is seriously looking into the matter, we have to accept the fact that the number of obese people has doubled in the past decade, these are not good indicators,'' said chairman of the Delhi Diabetes Research Centre, Ashok Jhingan.

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