Obesity as much about health as weight: Experts at national summit

Experts at a gathering called obesity a chronic disease rather than a cosmetic concern and urged a shift away from weight-centric thinking towards a deeper metabolic understanding and personalised care.

Speaking at the second National Obesity Summit here, health professionals and experts said obesity crisis is no longer about visible body weight alone, but about the metabolic risks quietly shaping India’s growing burden of non-communicable diseases.

During various session, experts emphasised that Body Mass Index (BMI), long treated as a primary indicator, fails to capture the complexity of obesity in the Indian context.

“Everyone is not an expert in managing BMI. There are several other factors like blood pressure, sugar and lipid levels that need to be considered,” said Dr K Madan Gopal, senior public health expert, and ex-advisor at NITI Aayog.

Dr Gopal pointed to the difficulty of categorising patients with varied risk profiles and stressed the growing relevance of technology in bridging these gaps including AI and digital tools.

WHO’s Catharina Boheme, officer-in-charge for South East Asia highlighted a crucial challenge in the country is facing at large. She said that in India we see that malnutrition and obesity coexist, making the challenge more complex to deal with. This was pointed to a quieter but equally serious rural dimension.

Catherine added that unhealthy options are often the most affordable and accessible and the system must change.

Speakers also said there was a need to understand obesity itself and who to approach to address it.

“People often go to practitioners (MBBS) who may or may not be specialists. There is a need to improve understanding of what obesity is, its causes, factors, and consequences within the medical community itself,” noted health experts.

They said that amid the rise of influencers, patients sometimes abandon treatment midway. The infrastructure needs to design systems that ensure continuity of care.

There was broad agreement that outcomes cannot be reduced to the number on a weighing scale.

“The focus should not only be on reducing weight. Improvement in metabolic indicators like sugar levels, blood pressure and lipid profile is equally, if not more, important,” Dr Naval Vikarm said, who is professor at department of medicine at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi.

Talking on solutions the speakers outlined three priorities scaling prevention across sectors such as schools and food systems. Strengthening policy incentives to maximise healthy eating options and working on regulation, and ensuring access to appropriate care.

Taken all together, the discussions signalled a clear shift in how obesity must be understood and addressed not as an individual failing, but as a complex public health challenge.