HYDERABAD: Obesity is no more an urban health concern, as it is often attributed to being. The issue is turning grave in rural areas. People in rural areas are gaining weight almost twice as fast as their urban counterparts in the country.
The phenomenon of rapid weight gain and obesity among rural folks is not limited to only India but prevails in most countries across the world.
This worrying fact has been pointed out by NCD Risk Factor Collaboration(NCD-RisC), a global network of health scientists that works closely with the World Health Organisation. NCD-RisC conducted a massive study, as part of which they studied Body Mass Index (BMI) in rural and urban areas of 200 countries from 1985 to 2017, using more than 2,000 population-based studies, with height and weight measurements of more than 112 million adults.
The study attributed more than half of global rise in BMI to people living in rural areas. It was published on Wednesday in the well known international science journal, Nature. According to this study, in 2017 the difference between BMI of urban and rural men and women had decreased to almost half of what it was in 1985, which means that the rural population have been gaining weight almost twice as fast.
Highest rise in BMI
Head of Public Health Nutrition Division at National Institute of Nutrition(NIN), Dr A Laxmaiah, who was part of the study pointed out that the highest rise in BMI in India, over a span of more than 30 years, has been recorded in Kerala (rise of 3.8 kg/m2), followed by West Bengal (2.6kg/m2) and united Andhra Pradesh (2.6kg/m2).