If you're up and about around 7.30 in the morning - returning from a run, or dropping your kid to school - and going through a low-income part of your city, you'll probably see two things. One is the eternally moving sight of an older sibling, parent or grandparent walking their child to school. The other is the frequent and worrying sight of the adult stopping at a grocery store to buy a packet of biscuits for the child's dabba. You understand it - low-income parents have immense barriers in their paths to the child's school, none of which you and I will ever confront - but it's still upsetting to see.
And we're seeing it now in the numbers.
Rates of obesity in India are rising, my colleague Nileena Suresh finds in her work for us. And here's one of the most worrying nuances that she finds: although obesity remains most common among the richest, urban households, the overall rise in obesity between 2016 and 2021 was largely driven by the rapid increase in prevalence among the poorest households in both rural and urban areas.
Nileena's own work in our Data Bytes section suggests one possible explanation. India's richest households are nearly twice as likely to eat fruit every week as those who live in its poorest households. In contrast, rich and poor households are equally likely to eat fried foods.
Those in poorer households eat fried food more frequently than fruits. According to the National Institute of Nutrition, unhealthy, highly processed, high-fat, sugar and salt foods have become more affordable and accessible than healthier alternatives like fruits, Nileena's research finds.
As households get richer, one thing that might shift is they might eat better. But if healthy food gets more expensive too, especially with the easy availability of cheap and unhealthy alternatives, just a shift in incomes alone is not automatically going to produce better health outcomes.
