Your child’s burger-and-Netflix binge has India on the edge of a crisis

A cheeseburger and french fries (Representational image) | Commons

A quarter of patients undergoing bariatric surgery for obesity-associated diseases were overweight as children, a study has found.

New Delhi: An early push for a healthy diet and physical activity can keep your child from a lifetime of pain from lifestyle diseases, a study by Delhi doctors on over 1,000 obese patients has found.

Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of the 1,078 patients who underwent bariatric surgery at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital between 2010 and 2018 were reportedly obese right from childhood, according to the study.

Coupled with another recent study that found 30 per cent of students at Delhi’s private schools to be obese, the research suggests India, already reeling under a growing disease burden, may be staring at a full-blown health crisis.

Bariatric surgery, also known as ‘obesity surgery’, is a weight-loss procedure where the size of the stomach is shrunk so the patient eats fewer, smaller meals. It is generally offered as an alternative when lifestyle changes fail to counter obesity in a patient, to ease associated conditions like Type-II diabetes, heart diseases like hypertension, and sleep apnea, a potentially serious disorder that affects patients in different ways.

“We found that 23 per cent of the patients were obese in their childhood or adolescence, and they went ahead to become morbidly obese and required surgery for medical conditions like diabetes, high blood pressure, sleep apnea, infertility etc,” Dr Sudhir Kalhan, chairman of the Institute of Minimal Access, Metabolic and Bariatric surgery at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, told The Print.

Of the patients who underwent bariatric surgery, the hospital said, 128 were in the age group of 14 to 28 years.

According to the researchers, unhealthy food habits and a sedentary lifestyle in childhood were among the main reasons risk factors for acquiring lifestyle diseases in adulthood.

“If an obese child becomes an obese adult, it is a much worse condition because they have grown with obesity as a part of their life. If an adult become obese, controlling it is easier than the childhood obesity,” Dr Kalhan said.

In another study carried out by the hospital, most of the 1,000 students examined by researchers were reportedly found to be pre-diabetic and hypertensive. The study centred on eight private schools.

More alarmingly, as many as 30 per cent of the students were found to be obese — a fact of particular concern since an estimated 40 per cent of Delhi’s students (around 16 lakh) are enrolled in private schools, according to the latest Delhi Economic Survey.

Releasing the results Thursday, the researchers said many school were found to be unknowingly facilitating unhealthy eating habits among students.

“School canteens were serving high-calorie drinks and deep-fried snacks cooked in unhealthy oils rich in trans fats and oil reheated multiple times. However, they were quick to rectify when informed,” Dr Vivek Bindal, a consultant laparoscopic, obesity and robotic surgeon at Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, told The Print.