KEY TRENDS   • Oxfam India's 2023 India Supplement report on poverty and inequality in India reveals that the gap between the rich and the poor is widening. Following the pandemic in 2019, the bottom 50 per cent of the population have continued to see their wealth chipped away. By 2020, their income share was estimated to have fallen to only 13 per cent of the national income and have less than 3...

-VillageSquare.in A new survey by the Development Intelligence Unit shows that obesity is a rapidly evolving problem, especially in rural India, and needs to be addressed through policies and awareness campaigns Thirty years ago, obesity was not considered a public health issue. Even as late as the 1990s, obesity was only seen as a western concern, whereas undernutrition or malnutrition was more of a problem for developing nations such as India. But the...

-VillageSquare.in The lure of processed fast food is not just an urban India problem - rural Indians are finding it increasingly hard to resist readily available junk food as a recent survey from the Development Intelligence Unit shows. Many of us have fond memories of drinking roohafza and eating homemade fryums.  OK, fryums are a deep-fried potato snack and roohafza might have fruit and herbs as its base but is loaded with sugar.  Still,...

-The Telegraph An important cause of this new epidemic is the aggressive marketing and the rising consumption of ultra-Processed foods — usually high in salt, sugar and bad fats A report published in BMJ Global Health has revealed that obesity and other conditions related to weight are costing India around 1 per cent of its gross domestic product annually. Overweight and obesity make up the most common lifestyle ailment in India and...

-ThePrint.in The intense industrial processes used to produce ultra-Processed foods destroy the natural structure of the ingredients and strip away many beneficial nutrients. * In some countries, ultra-Processed foods now account for 50% or more calories consumed. * Two new studies have shown that poor nutrition may not be enough to explain health risks. * Some researchers have theorized that ultra-Processed foods increase inflammation. * Ingredients such as emulsifiers, thickeners, protein isolates, and other industrial-sounding...