Raising an alarm on the need for nutritional intake for urban kids, a new survey today said 70 per cent children in Indian metro cities have below-median growth.

The Abbott SureMoms survey shows 70 per cent children in the 2-10 year age group in all four Indian metros have below-median growth parameters of height and weight.

Around 54 per cent of the below-median children fail on both height and weight parameters, while as many as 45 per cent of these children are nutritionally at-risk, the survey report said.

Around 61 per cent of below-median children were found to be fussy eaters.

Dr Bhaskar Raju, paediatrician at Mehta’s Hospitals in Chennai, said, “These findings highlight the need to track growth in children regularly to ensure they do not progressively fall below the median, which will put them at risk nutritionally”.

“Growth in children can be impacted by different factors, nutrition being one of them. Nutrition is important and is linked to eating behaviour,” he said.

In the survey, Mumbai was observed to have a high percentage of below-median children with 78 per cent failing on either height or weight or both, while Kolkata had the lowest percentage of children with below-median growth.

SureMoms, a nutrition education platform for parents by Abbott, commissioned TNS, a leading market research agency, to find out how children in Indian metros were actually faring on growth parameters.

Trained dietitians measured children’s height and weight and interviewed mothers on their child’s eating behaviour, across a sample size of 1,181 respondents.

Source: business standard