For decades, malnutrition in India’s urban slums has been synonymous with underweight children, stunting, and food insecurity. New data from a longitudinal birth cohort in Vellore suggest that the picture is becoming far more complex. Researchers from Christian Medical College, Vellore, and the Advanced Research Unit on Metabolic Disorders and Ageing at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research have reported that children growing up in low-income urban communities are increasingly experiencing a double burden of malnutrition, with thinness and obesity emerging side by side during childhood.
The study, published in The Lancet Regional Health Southeast Asia, followed 251 children enrolled in the Malnutrition and Enteric Disease (MAL-ED) cohort between 2010 and 2012. Participants from urban slum communities in Vellore were tracked from birth through 9 years of age, allowing investigators…
