Diet and Obesity

Diet is an important component of our lives. Our diet is dependent on our culture, religion, our location, socio economic status etc. but due to rapid urbanization and easy availability of energy dense foods (junk food/ unhealthy food), our daily diet has changed drastically over last couple of years. This has plummeted the problem of obesity manifolds more so in the urban areas as compared to rural areas. This is in addition to the sedentary lifestyles in urban areas (computer based office jobs) and lack of regular exercises that obesity has developed in huge volumes in our country. And the problem is just increasing day by day. It has even reached the children and childhood obesity has become a serious problem to tackle for the physicians. If we talk about the Indian figures, in a study carried out in 2015 there were more than 135 million individuals affected by obesity in India. Of these, approximately 8% children are affected by obesity which was found in a recent stats.

The unhealthy foods are widely marketed in the country and are being constantly bombarded in our minds so that many individuals including children, naturally are prone to consume these foods almost on a daily basis. While it is important to minimize everyone’s exposure to such products and diets, it is equally important to equip individuals with the knowledge to make sensible choices. Education and information are powerful elements of change and workplaces for adults and schools for the children should provide the same so that they can make healthier choices and bring about a change in the whole country. This works for improvement at the community level, while at the individual level people should also be aware regarding the healthy and unhealthy choices and strive to have a better nutrition and better healthy body. At the national level the government can impose and make the product companies to make available the nutritional information and also explain the amount of exercise needed to burn the amount of calorie consumed from the food product.

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