After conquering food shortages, India braces for obesity
New Delhi, May 30, 2004 (ANI)

As India fights to wipe out malnutrition, its urban elite is facing its own food crisis as sedentary lifestyles and fatty cuisine fuel an alarming rise in obesity, nutritionists say.

Fitness clubs have sprouted up across the major cities where prosperity has meant that Indians increasingly have money - as well as fat - to burn.

Anju Rathi, who juggles a job as a public prosecutor with rearing two children, realised last year that oily Indian food, ice cream and sweets had taken its toll.

She paid 24,000 rupees (530 dollars) to join an upscale health centre in New Delhi -- a hefty fee she called the "steep price for my overindulgence."

"Over four months I lost 25 kilograms (55 pounds)," said Rathi, 35. "Now I go for an hour's walk every morning and evening. Earlier I could not walk even a few steps as I weighed 96.5 kilograms (213 pounds)."

Food self-sufficiency is one of independent India's proudest achievements. While food shortages are still periodically reported, nothing comes close to the famine under British rule in 1943 when four million people died.

At least 21 percent of India's billion-plus population remains undernourished, UN figures show. But among high-income Indians, 50 percent of women and 32 percent of men are obese, according to the independent Nutrition Foundation of India.

"Obesity is spreading fast in the high social and economic groups, and more in the middle class people," said Sharmila Lal, a nutritionist and doctor at the non-governmental organisation Asha, which means Hope.

Wealthy urban Indians often live in a world of physical inertia in which they have drivers to take them door to door and servants to complete any manual chore.

Adding to the lack of exercise, traditional food, especially in north India, is usually deep-fried and layered with fattening butter and oil.

"In India it is considered good when the baby is chubby. If they are fatter they are considered better," said Lal, who reported a particular growth of weight problems among the young.

"Diabetes among the age group of between 20 and 30 was rare earlier. Now it is prevalent," she said.

Veena Aggarwal, vice president of a weight reduction centre called Curls and Curves Limited, said the rise in obesity among the young was also due to the popularity of Western-style fast food.

"Earlier our customers in the clinic were mostly women but now we see more and more teenagers coming in," said Aggarwal, who is also a consultant at the Nutrition Foundation of India.

"It is due to the fast-food culture which has invaded our homes," Aggarwal said.

Worldwatch, an independent research organisation on the environment and social policy, projects that India's fast-food industry was growing by 40 percent every year and will generate over a billion dollars in sales in 2005.

But Aggarwal said weight-loss centres were also "on a fast growth track."
India's slimming industry including sales of fitness equipment is expanding quickly and is already worth more than 20 billion rupees (442 million dollars) a year, according to US-based consultancy firm McKinsey and Company.

Nutritionists, however, said there was still not enough awareness in India about obesity and urged the government to step in.

"The government is yet to wake up," Lal said.

"A team comprising of doctors, dieticians and nutritionists must come up with a set of approvals and the government must soon form a regulator in this sector. That is the only way," Aggarwal added.