India’s Prevalence of Zero-Food Children

Published on 17 Apr 2025

•  A study published recently in the peer reviewed JAMA Network Open journal found the prevalence of zero-food children in India at 19.3%, drawing attention to extreme food deprivation among children.
• The study defined the zero-food children as those between 6-23 months who had not consumed any animal milk, solid or semisolid food in the last 24 hours.

Key Highlights 

• It was conducted across 92 low and middle income countries (LMIC).
• The data for India was sourced from the National Family Health Survey 2019-21.     - The study ranks India as having the third highest percentage (19.3%) of zero-food children, above Guinea (21.8%) and Mali (20.5%).
• India has by far the highest number of ‘zero-food’ children at 6.7 million, accounting for almost half of all ‘zero food children’ across 92 countries in the survey.
• It also talks about the importance of introducing solid or semisolid foods to a child’s diet - as breastfeeding alone is not sufficient to provide children with nutrition, which, in turn, might hinder their growth and development.

Another study published in 2023 in eClinical Medicine, part of the noted Lancet Discovery Science, found that Uttar Pradesh alone accounts for 28.4% of zero-food children in India, followed by Bihar (14.2%), Maharashtra (7.1%) and Rajasthan (6.5%).

Keywords:

Food security Hunger Nutritional security Poverty