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relationship between poverty and obesity
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obesity is global problem
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Food advertisements, soft drinks, the growth of fast food restaurants, and the increase in portion sizes at cheaper prices are the changes that negatively influence the United States in term of health problems. Over the past few decades, obesity has been the main nutritional problem and has become one of the most critical health concerns in America. According to recent statistics, approximately one third of American adults are obese in which they have a body mass index (BMI which can be calculated as an individual’s weight in kilograms divided by the square of height in meters) of 30 or higher. Obesity does not only shorten people’s life expectancy in the future, but also burdens the national medical spending which is nearly $147 billion every year. Around the world, over one billion adults and more than 10% of children are considered to obese. As the World Health Organization predicts, the number of obese children will increase to 700 million and nearly 2.3 billion adults by 2015. In addition, childhood obesity is correlated with a higher probability of becoming obese adults, premature death, and disability (Kaltra, De Sousa, Sonavane, & Shah, 2013).
Many researchers believe that racial composition of communities associated with obesity and that obesity has a big impact on various subgroups in the United States. In a study, the researchers compared the mean body mass index values among the popular races. As the results, people who live with a high proportion of Blacks and Hispanics have a higher BMI, and people who live in Asian communities have a lower mean BMI. Furthermore, they found that Black people (36%) were most likely to be obese with the mean body mass index of 28.6, followed by Hispanics (28.7%), Whites (24.5%), an...
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..., A., Sonavane, S., & Shah, N. (2013). Psychological issues in pediatric obesity. Industrial Psychiatry Journal, 21(1), 11-17.
Karasu, S. R. (2012). Of Mind and Matter: Psychological Dimensions in Obesity. American Journal Of Psychotherapy, 66(2), 111-128.
Kirby, J. B., Liang, L., Chen, H., & Wang, Y. (2012). Race, Place, and Obesity: The Complex Relationships Among Community Racial/Ethnic Composition, Individual Race/Ethnicity, and Obesity in the United States. American Journal Of Public Health, 102(8), 1572-1578.
Palou, A., & Bonet, M. (2013). Challenges in obesity research. Nutricion Hospitalaria, 28, 144-153.
Sallis, J. F., & Glanz, K. (2009). Physical Activity and Food Environments: Solutions to the Obesity Epidemic. Milbank Quarterly, 87(1), 123-154.
Tomer, J. (2011). What Causes Obesity? And Why Has It Grown So Much?. Challenge (05775132), 54(4), 22-49.
She states a simple statistic that claims that obesity ifs the number one killer in America and then proceed to analyze reasons this problem could have arisen. The primary focus of this paper is on the health care disparities in minority communities. She also attributes increase in obesity to increase in high fructose corn sysops in food products, sweetened beverages, dietary habit changes in the past decades, changes in activity levels, governmental policies like farm subsidies. Her focus is in contrast to the other papers because instead of questioning the medicalization of obesity, she is question the changes in society that have led to the increasing obesity. She takes the lethality of obesity as an obvious fact backed by statistical
The American Public Health Association. (2003). The obesity epidemic in U.S. minority communities (Issue Brief ). Retrieved from : : .
Interest in the social aspects of obesity is nothing new. Jeffrey Sobal has written extensively about the social and psychological consequences of obesity , including the stigmatisation and discrimination of obese and even overweight individuals (Sobal 2004).
Over 60 million people are obese in the world today. The socioeconomic statuses of the Americans play a major part in the obesity rates across the country. People with higher incomes are less likely to be obese than people with lower incomes. One in every seven preschool-aged children living in lower income areas are obese (Center for Disease Control and Prevention). A 2008 study showed that obesity is highest among American Indian and Alaska Native (21.2 percent) and Hispanic Americans (18.5 percent) children, and it is lowest among white (12.6 percent), Asian or Pacific Islander (12.3 percent), and black (11.8 percent) children (Get America Fit).
Ogden, C.L., Carroll, M.D., Kit, B.K., & Flegal, K. M., (2012). Prevalence of obesity and
Obesity is a leading health problem in the United States because of its increasing prevalence and etiology role in many chronic health conditions (Wee et al. 2011). Chronic health conditions that tend to have high rates of weight related chronic condition in the African American population are cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and as a result of hypertension, chronic renal failure. Americans has increased its restaurant portions, number of fast food restaurants and has gotten away from home cooked meals served in normal portions. Seven out of 10 African Americans ages 18 to 64 are obese or overweight, and African Americans are 15% more likely to suffer from obesity than the general population (Healthreform.gov). According to Newton, R., Cromwell, R. & Rogers, H. (2009), contributing factors of obesity are inactivity, poor eating behaviors, gender, race, education and ...
6. Puska P., Nishida C., (2003) Obesity and Over weight. Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health. World Health Organization.
Wang, Y. (2001, February 23). Cross-nation comparison obesity: the epidemic and relationship between obesity and socioeconomic status. p. 12.
Since 1970, the obesity rates in America have more than doubled. Currently two-thirds of (roughly 150 million) adults in the United States are either overweight, or obese (Food Research and Action Center). According to the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, “overweight is defined as a body mass index (BMI) greater than 25 whereas obesity is defined as a BMI greater than 30.” There are numerous factors that contribute to obesity such as: biological, behavioral and cultural influences (Food Research and Action Center). While these factors all have a large role in obesity, there is no factor with as great of an influence as poverty.
Obesity is a growing concern in the United States. (Steele, 2014) Being overweight or obese has been held as the cause for many health problems. The author of the article states, “Being obese increases the risk of serious health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, stroke, arthritis and some cancers.”(Steele, 2014) In Margret Farley Steele’s article Obesity Remains Rampant Across America, we read of the problems and risk factors associated with obesity. Since socioeconomic status and ethnicity are tied into the problem of obesity this issue can be considered a problem of stratification. Being a social problem an analysis will be done through the lens of structural functionalist Robert Merton and critical theorist Theodor
This public health issue does not only effect individuals but the national as a whole in regards to the health care system costs. Obesity in children "costs the health care system $14 billion per year, much which comes from public funds" (Glanz, 2008). Also, obesity is expected to cause 112,000 deaths per year in the United States(Gollust, 2014). In addition, many changes seen in the health care sy...
(Jonas Minet, Stephen morris 2010). The prevalence of obesity has increased more than twofold in the last 25 years. In 2014, world health organisation (WHO) estimates that 1.9 billions of world’s adult populations are overweight, of which at least 600 million were obese, representing 13% of adult’s population (obesity WHO, 2014). Obesity is no longer a rich country’s problem, but also affects the poor and emerging countries which make it a major public health challenge. ( )
Crossley, N. 2004. Fat is a Sociological Issue: Obesity Rates in Late Modern, Body-Conscious' Societies. Social Theory & Health, 2 (3), pp. 222--253.
Wellman, N. S., & Friedberg, B. (2002). Causes and consequences of adult obesity: health, social and economic impacts in the United States. Asia Pacific journal of clinical nutrition, 11(s8), S705-S709.
Over the course of the last few decades, the U.S. has seen a drastic rise in the spread of obesity. Through the rise of large-scale fast food corporations, the blame has shifted toward the mass consumerism of these global industries. It is, however, due to poor lifestyle choices that the U.S. population has seen a significant increase in the percentage of people afflicted with obesity. In 1990 the percentage of obese people in the United States was approximated at around 15%. In 2010, however, it is said that “36 states had obesity rates of 25 percent or higher”(Millar). These rates have stayed consistent since 2003. The obesity problem in America is