Statsguru: Obesity, a pandemic in the making, may hit India hard by 2050

While addressing a rally recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed the alarming rise in obesity rates among Indians ‘scary’. Quoting a report which said roughly a third of Indians would suffer from obesity by 2050, Modi reiterated the importance of physical activity and urged people to cut down on edible oil consumption by 10 per cent.

 

According to a study published in the Lancet journal, overweight and obesity rates in adults (aged above 25) and children and adolescents (aged 5-24) more than doubled globally from 1990-2021. The number of Indian obese children and adolescents rose from 2.75 million in 1991 to 14.29 million in 2021. This number is projected to rise to 26.44 million by 2050 (Chart 1). 

 

The number of Indian obese adults increased from 5.76 million in 1991 to 46.78 million in 2021; it is poised to reach 173.73 million by 2050. India trailed China in the number of overweight or obese adults in 2021, but these figures for India are estimated to grow at 150.42 per cent, reaching 449.95 million by 2050 (Charts 2 and 3).     

 

Total edible oil consumption in India inched up to 27.83 million tonnes (mt) in 2023-24 from 23.05 mt in 2014-15. However, more than half of this consumption was driven by edible oil imports (Chart 4). 

 

As many as 49.4 per cent of Indian adults (aged 18 and above) were physically inactive in 2022, up from 34 per cent in 2016 (Chart 5). 

 

Nearly three-fourths of Indian children and adolescents did not engage regularly in physical activity, with 76.3 per cent of Indian girls and 71.8 per cent of Indian boys found to be physically inactive in 2016 (Chart 6).