More urban adolescents obese than overweight, finds study in Chennai school | Chennai News

Chennai: More than one in five adolescents at a higher secondary school in the city were of excess weight, with obesity outpacing overweight, according to a study by the Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (SRIHER).The findings, published in peer-reviewed medical journal Cureus, examined 222 students aged 13–18 years and found 7.7% were overweight and 14% obese. While 36.9% of the students had normal body weight, 41.5% were underweight — including 8.6% classified as severely thin. “We are still battling undernutrition, but an increasing number of children with above-normal body weight are progressing quickly from overweight to obese,” said Asher Edward Prem Kumar, the study’s first author from SRIHER’s department of community medicine.While the researchers acknowledged that larger, multi-school studies are needed, they said the findings highlight an urgent trend in urban adolescents. The analysis revealed a clear gender gap: girls were about six times more likely to be overweight or obese than boys. The study attributed this to lower physical activity among girls, often restricted by cultural norms, safety concerns, household responsibilities, and limited participation in organised sports. It said similar gender disparities have been reported in studies from Kerala and Karnataka, suggesting a widespread pattern across urban India. The recently released Obesity Atlas 2026 showed there is a 4.8% annual increase in the prevalence of children living with high BMI in India, where 41 million children in the 5–19 age group were of excess weight and 14.9 million were living with obesity.The study identified two major lifestyle risk factors: spending more than two hours daily on screens and eating fast food three or more times a week — both of which more than doubled the risk of excess weight. “Evidence shows that excessive screen time promotes sedentary behaviour, limits physical activity, and encourages mindless snacking,” the study said. Dr Kannan Lakshminarayanan, professor and corresponding author from SRIHER’s department of community medicine said,”Students have easy access to fast food as vendors and shops cluster around schools.” “Policies restricting food sales around schools — similar to those for tobacco and alcohol — must be implemented,” he added. Paediatricians say obesity has been steadily rising among school students. “In several private schools, there are now more children who are obese than those who are merely overweight. The percentage of underweight children is far lower,” said senior paediatrician Dr Indira Jayakumar from Apollo Sunshine Foundation, who was not part of the study but has been working in the field for years. “The number of children with obesity doubles from primary to high school,” she said. “We blame the seven ‘S-sins’ — sedentary lifestyle with little exercise, snacking on high-carb oily foods, stress, inadequate sleep, salty food, sugary drinks, and screen abuse. They are directly linked to unhealthy weight gain.”