Nutritional Transition and Associated Epidemiological Transition in India

Abstract

Overnutrition and associated health risks are no longer confined to high-income countries and have now become an emerging problem among the low- and middle-income countries. In India, overweight and obesity prevalence has doubled amongst men and has become more than one and a half times amongst women over a ten-year period, 2005 – 2015. The increase in overnutrition at state level is even more striking, with some states experiencing more than 100% increase in the prevalence of overweight and obesity during the above period. Overnutrition is linked to increase in the health burden in the form of rise in non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, heart strokes, certain type of cancers, etc. This article examines the recent trends in overnutrition and prevalence of diabetes in India and analyses the effects of overnutrition on diabetes considering state level data. Our analysis suggests that India is experiencing a nutritional transition with more than 24 states and union territories having higher overnutrition prevalence as compared to undernutrition prevalence. Diabetes has been rising in India, and our empirical analyses finds that a rise in overweight and obesity prevalence adversely affects diabetes prevalence. Important finding is that the marginal effect of a rise in obesity prevalence on diabetes is are more than twice than that for overweight and obesity prevalence suggesting that higher BMI values further elevates the risk of diabetes. These results suggest that the nutritional transition in India is leading to an epidemiological transition.