According to Nikhil Tandon, an endocrinologist at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, pound for pound, Indians have less lean mass, more body fat and more central fat than white Caucasians. In 2011, India had 62.4 million people with type-2 diabetes. In 2010, the number was 50.8 million.

With more than a twenty percent increase in diabetes in just one year and with a genetic predisposition towards diabetes, the Indian healthcare system will soon be severely impacted by the effects of diabetes. And since 80 percent of Indian health care is paid for privately today, the effects of no treatment should be expected to explode over the next several years.

 

The U.S. has been facing an obesity crisis for years (and the diabetes issues that can come with it), but could attitudes towards healthier eating now be changing?  In U.S. restaurants, servings of kids’ meals with toys were down 6 percent for the year ended December 2011, from about 1.3 billion servings to 1.2 billion servings – the fourth straight year of such declines.

Is this an ongoing signal that parents are changing their buying pattern to decrease the amount of fast food their children eat, or is this trend capturing the desire of parents to save money by ordering off the dollar menu?

Share this post
Twitter Facebook Linkedin