As countries
develop it is more than just their GDP that grows; it is also their waistlines.
For India this growth could be more harmful than elsewhere as traditional factors
clash with the new prevalence towards fashionable, imported food and drink.
The problem
of Indian childhood obesity is particularly alarming with some estimates
putting the growth from 2011-2016 as 16% to 29% amongst 5-16 year olds. The condition
has severe consequences for children as it leads to the early onset of serious diseases
normally associated with adulthood (high blood-pressure, type 2 diabetes, and
heart disease) at a time when the body is ill-equipped to tackle. Indeed if the
current trend continues the number of overweight or obese children across Asia
could grow from 15 million today to 70 million by 2025. There are a number of
key Indian factors behind this growth that can roughly be divided into internal
and external forces.
The model
that many economies strive towards is that demonstrated by the United States of
America; famous for many things including, most relevantly, obesity. Although
Indian levels are still far off those exhibited by the U.S., the lifestyle that
is championed by the world’s largest consumer is certainly here to stay as
demonstrated by two key market indicators; soft drinks and fast food. Soft
drink sales within India have been growing around 30% per annum for the past
three years and have been touted to continue at this rate for another four.
Meanwhile the fast-food market is on course to double between 2013 and 2016
and, equally alarmingly, mothers are also moving away from the famed
“old-fashioned” home cooking in favour of pre-packaged ready meals.
And then
there are the factors unique to India. The key factors affecting childhood
obesity are considered stress and lack of exercise. In a country as populous as
India there is fierce competition to attend the highest educational
institutions meaning children are placed under huge amounts of pressure from
their parents to achieve success at school. Couple to this to the lack of
playing facilities offered at many Indian schools, to let off some of this
steam as well as exercise, it creates a dangerous combination where comfort
eating is, unsurprisingly, often the result.
Furthermore,
there has recently been a physiological link established between Indian
genetics and weight gain; known as the “thrifty phenotype” hypothesis. This proposes
that the relatively rapid change from food scarcity to food paucity has resulted
in a metabolism ill-equipped to efficiently process the highly-calorific
sustenance that has become common-place. Champions of this theory describe the
Indian body type as smaller and flabbier than those found elsewhere after
generations of constrained diets and thus resulting in higher likelihood of
obesity linked diseases when exposed to a more affluent environment.
The factors
and implications laid out above demonstrate that India could be worse at
dealing with the change in household diets than other developing nations. It is
surely a sign of its significance that this problem has reached the ears of
Indian policy makers who are drafting legislation that will curb the TV
advertising of foods rich in non-esterified fatty acids (fast foods)and sugar-rich
drinks during the hours that children are exposed. There is also talk of
imposing special taxes on such goods however, for the time being this is just
talk. These are both promising signs but must be brought to fruition if the
world’s fastest developing nation is to avoid a long-term health catastrophe
emerging at the same remarkable rate.
-William Lewis
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