Obesity a public health crisis, not cosmetic issue, says Jitendra Singh at IISF

Union Minister of State for Science & Technology, Jitendra Singh, said on Monday that obesity in India has become a serious public health concern rather than a cosmetic issue, calling for scientific precision and policy discipline in tackling rising metabolic disorders.

Speaking at the panel discussion “Clinician–Scientist Interaction on Obesity” during the India International Science Festival (IISF), Singh said obesity entered mainstream medical discussion in India only in the last 15 years. He noted that public perception had long treated it as a matter of appearance rather than a medical condition.

Singh highlighted the high prevalence of visceral obesity among Indians, saying waist circumference was often more revealing than total body weight. He cautioned against rapid adoption of GLP-based weight-loss drugs, stating that long-term effects remained unclear and should be studied over several years.

He also pointed to emerging concerns such as sarcopenia and the cosmetic side-effect known as “Ozempic face,” both linked to rapid or drug-assisted weight reduction.

Further, Singh said that unverified diets, informal weight-loss practices, and unqualified advisors were worsening health outcomes. “The problem is not lack of awareness but the scale of disinformation,” he said, adding that India lacked mechanisms to verify the credentials of self-declared diet experts.

The minister noted a shift in outpatient profiles, with fatty-liver disease now appearing as frequently as undiagnosed diabetes. He called for stronger regulation and a more scientific ecosystem to manage metabolic disease.

Quoting Mark Twain, Singh underscoring that obesity was too wide-ranging to be left only to endocrinologists and required societal, cultural and policy-based responses.

The panel included senior clinicians and researchers such as Ashwani Pareek, Vinod K. Paul, V.K. Saraswat, Ullas Kolthur, Ganesan Karthikeyan, Sanjay Bhadada and Sachin Mittal. The session concluded with agreement on the need for coordinated action between researchers, medical professionals, policymakers and the public.