Bollywood actresses are slimming down, as a greater than ever vogue for showing exposed flesh on screen and Western ideas about body size and beauty take hold in India’s big cities.

Whereas previous most important ladies like Mumtaz and Zeenat Aman once found their rounded figures no barrier to success, their modern-day counterpart are as famous for their diet and fitness regime as their acting and dancing skills.

“There have been a lot of changes in the last decade, whether it’s in modeling or in Bollywood,” said nutritionist and fitness professional Venu Hirani, who works in India’s entertainment capital, Mumbai.

“Today, the basic necessity for someone wanting to go into what’s more is that they require to be a (US) size zero,” she told AFP.

Actress Kareena Kapoor has been the focus of much media concentration since appearing in a bikini in the 2008 film “Tashan” (Style) — a significant progress in an industry known for its chaste treatment of romantic love.

The 29-year-old star slimmed down noticeably for the role and apparently distorted on set.

She has since had to deny suggestion that her current weight is unhealthful, as an alternative attributing her smaller size to eating in the approved manner, regular exercise and yoga.

“My size zero is such a hot topic of conversation… that when Saif (Ali Khan, her actor boyfriend) and I eat out at a restaurant, people don’t stare so much at us as… what is on my plate,” she told the Bombay Times newspaper.

“Some even ask the maitre d’: ‘What is she ordering for dinner?’ I love the interest constituent,” she said.

Other Bollywood actresses, like Bipashu Basu and Shilpa Shetty, have launched fitness or yoga videos.

Some, such as Priyanka Chopra and Deepika Padukone, over and over again talk about the significance of sports in their health organization.

But while Kapoor and others can twist to their own individual dietician and fitness trainers for expert guidance, some health professionals fear the phenomenon could make a payment to dangerous, unregulated weight loss in the middle of fans.

“Maybe about a decade ago you would have had people come to me for post-pregnancy weight loss, or people with health conditions,” she said.

“Now I have more and more of the younger age group who don’t really need to lose weight but tell me they need to hammer off five kilogram’s.”

Hirani and Roshni Pithawala, another Mumbai-based specialist dietician and counselor, said Bollywood and the growth of Internet access, cable television and advertise are change the way Indians look at their bodies.

Few formal studies on the occurrence of eating disorder in India exist but one report recommended that conditions like anorexia and bulimia were increasing, even though they were yet to reach levels found in Western countries.

“Socio-economic educational changes and Westernization could result in the culture-change set of symptoms of eating disorders in India today,” the study, published in the journal Indian Pediatrics in May 2007, said.

The state of affairs was following a similar pattern to the West, with higher socio-economic groups pretentious, it additional.

Pithawala said peer weight in the middle of teenage girls to look good, family and school pressure played a part, as did a lack of education in Indian schools about nutrition and healthy eating.

When they look at their heroes and heroines, “they make an ideal image, which might not be the reality for them. That individual may have spent millions of rupees to get that figure. It’s an impractical goal,” she said.

Kapoor herself is as well alert to the problem, saying what works for her strength not work for everyone.