Obesity among adults increases, under-nutrition among kids still at dangerous level: NFHS

Malnutrition which refers to both undernutrition (sub-nutrition) and over-nutrition is proving to be a double-edged sword for India, according to the latest National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2015-16.

The number of underweight adults has come down by one-third of 2006 level, surprisingly, the number of overweight adults has almost doubled in the last ten years. In India about 50 percent of deaths among children under the age of 5 are related to malnutrition.

Currently, every one adult out of five in India is overweight. One-third of the women living in urban centres in India are obese or overweight, that is, their Body Mass Index (BMI) is more than 25. Whereas, one-fourth of the men in urban areas overweight.

Compared to the last round of the NHFS in 2005-06, there is a drop of 14 percent in underweight men and more than 12 percent decline in underweight women in India.

The number of overweight men and women in India has shot up, in comparison to previous NHFS in 2005-06. There are nine percent more overweight men and eight percent more overweight women in The country.

The contrast between rural areas and urban area is evident as the greater number of people in urban locations are obese than being underweight, whereas, in rural areas the case it totally opposite. One out of every seven people is obese, whereas, one-fourth of the total adult population in villages is underweight, that is, their BMI is less than 18.

Only one out of ten children of age between six months and two years get adequate diet, the survey reported. A UNICEF report says that half of the death of all the children in the world is due to under-nutrition. India leads the pack accounting for nearly 22 percent of the deaths.

Even after the 10 percent decline in the number of undernourished children in India within last 10 years, over 38 percent of the children under age of five are stunted and around the same percentage of them are underweight, the NFHS 2015-16 indicates.

Not surprisingly, among the educated families, cases of children malnutrition are low. 47 percent of the children in families with no formal education are underweight whereas in cases of families with Secondary or more level of education this is at 29 percent. Graphs for stunted children show similar trends.

Source

There seems to be a general correlation between malnutrition and income as well. Wealthy families have a lower proportion of stunted or underweight children. More than half of the children from families the lowest of the wealth quintile are stunted and underweight.