The growing trend of obesity will cause healthcare costs to go up
| Photo Credit:
Aleksei Naumov

In his Independence Day address, Prime Minister Narendra Modi flagged India’s growing obesity crisis and urged people to cut down on cooking oil consumption. Now, the fat is really in the fire with UNICEF warning about the grave economic costs of India’s obesity problem.

According to UNICEF’s Child Nutrition Global Report 2025, obesity has surpassed the problem of underweight globally among school-going children and adolescents and India, too, is following the global trend. 

Quoting the World Obesity Federation estimates, the UNICEF report said that in 2019, obesity-related costs were estimated at nearly $29 billion, or 1 per cent of India’s GDP. By 2060, this figure is projected to reach $839 billion — or 2.5 per cent of GDP — unless urgent measures are taken. Unhealthy diets are now the leading contributor to India’s disease burden, accounting for 56 per cent of it, the report said

Unique opportunity

During a roundtable discussion on the report, Marie-Claude Desilets, Chief, Nutrition, UNICEF India, however, said, “India has a unique opportunity to act now to prevent overweight and obesity in children.”

The discussion took note of National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data, which found that there has been a huge surge in overweight and obese under-five children, with prevalence rising by 127 per cent (from 1.5 per cent to 3.4 per cent between NFHS 3 in 2005-06 to NFHS 5 in 2019-21. Similarly, adolescent girls and boys have seen an increase in obesity of 125 per cent (from 2.4 per cent to 5.4 per cent) and 288 per cent (from 1.7 per cent to 6.6 per cent) respectively.

Key factors

Manoj Kumar Agarwal, Professor of Economics at Lucknow University, listed lack of walking, physical playing and exercising as reasons for rising obesity. “This issue can be tackled largely by adopting healthy lifestyles, yoga, etc,” he said, cautioning that ignoring the crisis will put pressure on the personal finance of individuals. 

According to Anil K Sood, Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies in Complex Choices, the growing trend of obesity will cause healthcare costs to go up, particularly personal out-of-pocket expenditure. In addition, “we expect insurance costs to go up too, as insurers start building obesity related costs in their estimation models,” he said.

Published on September 11, 2025