Urban India moving towards healthy eating; Kolkata, Pune, Delhi lead the way

People in Ahmedabad, followed by Chennai and Lucknow, have the most nutritionally-deficit diets after Vadodara.

People in Kolkata stay on track the best when it comes to eating right to lose weight while those in Vadodara have the most unhealthy eating diets, shows data collated for 2017 from close to 4 million users over 200 Indian towns and cities.

After Kolkata, people from Pune and New Delhi are the most mindful about what they eat, shows data mined by a smartphone application, HealthifyMe. People in Ahmedabad, followed by Chennai and Lucknow, have the most nutritionally-deficit diets after Vadodara.

The data collated by the fitness application’s close to 4 million users, who use the app to record what they eat through the day. Using this self-reported data, the app calculates the user’s total calorie intake, including the protein, carbohydrate, fat and fibre intake.

“The data has been collated for the year 2017-18 from 220 cities across India. We have about 150 million foods listed, which includes a range of Indian foods, that people refer to on a daily basis,” says Tushar Vashisht, CEO of HealthifyMe.

Boiled egg, cucumber and orange is what most people prefer when thinking of healthy food and among unhealthy choices, mutton curry, potato samosa, jalebi, french fries and chocolates are the most popular.

“Clearly people want to eat healthy and they are making a conscious effort to eat healthy meals,” Vashisht said.