Nearly a third of India will be obese by 2050: New Lancet study

Over the last few years, obesity rates have seen an upward trend. But now a new Lancet study has highlighted an obesity epidemic, predicting that 218 million men and 231 million women in India, nearly one-third of the country's population, will be obese by 2050.

The researchers estimated the prevalence of overweight and obesity among individuals aged 25 years and older by age and sex for 204 countries and territories from 1990 to 2050.

According to the study, obesity has risen sharply among older adolescents (aged 15 to 24). Among young men, the number of overweight or obese adolescents increased from 4 million in 1990 to 16.8 million in 2021 and is expected to reach 22.7 million by 2050.

Among young women, the number grew from 3.3 million in 1990 to 13 million in 2021, with projections showing it could rise to 16.9 million by 2050.

In 2021, India had the highest number of overweight or obese young people, surpassing China and the United States.

The researchers predicted that taking into account the historical trends and patterns that continue to rise, "we



forecast that by 2050, the total number of individuals over 25 years of age with overweight and obesity will rise to 3.80 billion globally, among which 1.95 billion would have obesity."

China (with 627 million affected individuals), India (450 million) and the USA (214 million) would continue to be the three countries with the largest numbers of people with overweight and obesity.

There are several factors for this obesity crisis. The researchers said that the global epidemic is driven by a multitude of systemic factors.

"In addition to socio-environmental factors, commercial determinants are essential in driving the obesity pandemic. Agricultural subsidies have been transforming the global food production and supply ecosystem, changing dietary content across all populations," they wrote.

Meanwhile, multinational food and beverage corporations and fast-food chains are shifting their investments from high-income countries to low and middle-income countries, where population growth, improvement in per-capita income, and weaker regulations have created favourable markets for expansion.