This World

India's Supersize Kids (2013x6)

Air date: Aug 13, 2013

Anita Rani travels to Mumbai to investigate the obesity epidemic engulfing India's growing middle class. She meets some of India's overweight teenagers who can't stop bingeing on western fast foods, including 13-year-old Kaleb who weighs more than 15 stone. She visits the clinics at the centre of a booming industry in weight loss surgery. Regulation of the fast food industry is much looser than in Western countries and wealthy Indians are susceptible to the lure of advertising and the promise of a western lifestyle. What is more, Indians are more genetically disposed to obesity and to the diabetes that all too often accompanies it. And now that the international fast-food chains and their Indian imitators are opening up branches beyond the big cities in India, the obesity problem is set to explode into a national pandemic