Overview
- India recorded about 41 million school‑age children with high BMI in 2025, including roughly 14 million living with obesity, second only to China.
- Projections for 2040 estimate 20 million Indian children living with obesity and 56 million who are overweight or obese if current trends continue.
- BMI‑linked disease indicators in Indian children are forecast to rise sharply by 2040, including hypertension from 2.99 million to 4.21 million and fatty liver disease from 8.39 million to 11.88 million.
- Key risk factors cited include 74% of adolescents not meeting activity recommendations, only 35.5% school‑meal coverage, and 32.6% of young infants receiving suboptimal breastfeeding.
- The World Obesity Federation calls for sugar‑sweetened beverage taxes, restrictions on unhealthy food marketing to children, stronger school‑food standards, and integration of prevention into primary care, noting countries remain off‑track for the childhood‑obesity halt target now pushed to 2030.