India’s ‘Second Window of Growth’: Experts Call for Urgent Overhaul of Adolescent Nutrition Policies

New Delhi News (15 October 2025): India must treat adolescence as its “second window of growth” and urgently invest in nutrition, education, and healthy food systems to prevent a looming health and productivity crisis, experts emphasized at the 3rd International Conference on Public Health and Nutrition (ICPHN 2025), organized by Sukarya in New Delhi.

Prof. K. Srinath Reddy, Chancellor of the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), warned that failure to address adolescent nutrition could “lock in intergenerational poverty and poor health outcomes.” Citing NFHS-5 data showing that 56% of adolescent girls are anaemic and one in four adolescents is under- or overweight, he said, “Policy must make the healthy choice the easy choice,” calling for better alignment between food, agriculture, and education policies.

Dr. Deepika Nayar, Senior Health, Nutrition and Population Specialist at the World Bank, said adolescent health is both a moral and economic imperative. “Every dollar invested in adolescent health yields a tenfold return through higher productivity and lower disease burden,” she said, urging the scaling up of initiatives like WIFS and RKSK and the integration of digital tools for real-time nutrition tracking.

From the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), Dr. Supreet Kaur highlighted that adolescent nutrition cannot be separated from wider food system reforms. “One in five deaths globally is linked to poor diets. We need integrated strategies — food labelling, waste reduction, and fiscal incentives for healthy produce — to reshape consumption patterns,” she said.

UNICEF India’s nutrition specialist Preetu Mishra described India’s youth as facing a “triple burden” of undernutrition, overnutrition, and micronutrient deficiencies. “Childhood obesity has already overtaken underweight globally. Without strong policy action, we risk a generation struggling with both stunting and lifestyle diseases,” she warned, advocating front-of-pack food labelling and taxation of high-fat, salt, and sugar foods.

Dr. Satvinder Kaur, Associate Professor at UCSI University, Malaysia, offered a regional perspective: “Malaysian adolescents eat enough protein but mostly from fried or processed foods. Promoting diverse protein sources like eggs, fish, soy, and tempeh, supported by school initiatives and sugar taxes, has shown encouraging results. India can adapt similar models.”

Dr. Shweta Khandelwal, Vice President at IPE Global, noted that adolescent nutrition should start before pregnancy. “With 11% of births in India still among adolescents, pre-conception care must be integrated into all maternal-health programs. We must engage youth as co-creators, not just beneficiaries,” she said.

From the data front, Dr. Suman Chakrabarti of IFPRI warned that recent national data show plateauing height trends and rising obesity. “Adolescents are not growing taller but wider — a worrying sign of hidden hunger and excess calories,” he cautioned.

Conference Chair Dr. Sujeet Ranjan, CEO of United Way Delhi, stressed convergence: “No single sector can solve this challenge. Health, education, agriculture, and urban policy must talk to each other. Only then can adolescent health become a national mission.”

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