War Against Obesity

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socioeconomic status and obesity are related. Indeed, there have been major strides on bringing down the number of obese children. However, the one group that always seems to lag behind the others are racial minorities and the poor and those two are quite often one and the same. Tackling obesity for people of all racial and income levels is important because it brings down the average healthcare costs for everyone as it prevents (or at least slows) conditions like diabetes, heart disease and cancer. This report will only cite articles and studies that appear in academic-level journals and that are stored on EBSCO Host. No internet sources or other material shall be used. While entirely stomping out obesity will not likely happen in our lifetime, there are people that are very much at risk and that would be those with lower socioeconomic status and thus the inability to afford quality healthcare.

Scholarly Literature Review

The main theme that has come forth from this research is that having lower socioeconomic status is strongly linked to obesity. However, one pertinent question is why they are link but it is not always about money, it would seem. One example of this in motion would be the study done by Albaladejo et al. (2014) about whether proximity of sports facilities and risky behaviors is an explanation for whether someone will end up obese or not. Indeed, Albaladejo suggests that there is not a link between the two and that whether those facilities or behaviors are present has little to no bearing on the masses in general when it comes to the lower realms of socioeconomic status. It was basically stated that there was definitely a socioeconomic disparity between the affluent and the poor. However, it did not relate to risky behavior, sports facilities and so forth. They take things a step further and suggest that simply being around such areas even if socioeconomic position is otherwise high is not something that leads to an avoidance of problems. In short, it is more about where someone is rather than how much money they make, although those two are obviously related more often than not (Albaladejo, Villanueva, Navalpotro, Astasio & Regidor, 2014).

Because there seems to be a racial trend when it comes to obesity vs. socioeconomic status, many have found it useful to look at the differences that exist between differing racial groups in seemingly similar situations. Something that clear came through is that white people, even poor white people, tend to do better and more often when it comes to avoiding obesity. The highest performers reflected a count of about 71% white people with blacks and Hispanics splitting the rest. This was true of a study that looked at fifth graders and the precise same disparity between the races continued through at least the seventh grade. The opposite was true when it came to the overall levels of kids that were obese. Only 14.2% of white kids were obese while that number was 27.2 and 22.4 for blacks and Hispanics, respectively. The overall average obesity rate was about 18.7%. In other words, whites dragged down the average while blacks and Hispanics raised it. While it is sometimes flawed, the body mass index (BMI) scale was used to determine obesity or non-obesity. Then again, the number of youth with overly-muscular and non-normal bodies is quite small except for the "early bloomers" that grow taller and more mature more quickly than people in their own age group (Fradkin, Wallander, Elliott, Tortolero, Cuccaro, & Schuster, 2015).

As for the factors that do indeed lead to obesity in the young, regardless of race or background, there are works that have looked at that particular question. One such question was posed in the work of Bryant and Hess (2015). One major cause that is pointed to is the food supply of the United States and how it basically guarantees that the poor will gravitate towards bad food. This leads to adults being overweight as well as the kids. The grownups and the kids are usually eating the same thing and the "bad" stuff is typically cheaper than the "good" stuff. Indeed, one only needs to compare price points at Whole Foods and Wal-Mart to know that first hand. Of course, eating a healthy meal is not just about the caloric intake or a "number on a scale" but is more about eating the right type of fats, eating those fats in the right proportions, avoiding overuse of salt, containing portion size and so forth.

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One way to mitigate the low costs of bad food is for communities to come together in the form of community gardens, neighborhood food pantries and other things that help women, infants and parents in general raise their child on good food and good habits without breaking the budget (Bryant, Hess & Bowman, 2015).

It is certainly not just the United States or other parts of North America that have to deal with this. Indeed, much the same battle of ideas and education is being fought in China. However, even if the United States and China are very different, the linchpins and the creators of childhood obesity rates are much the same. China had a huge increase in income inequality starting in 1997. Since then, childhood obesity rates have risen. There is also the variable whereby Chinese families were once only allowed to have one child per family. That has since been relaxed and was never absolute across the board. Regardless, it is clear that China has been focusing on the wrong things or have not been focusing on enough things as the obesity rate rise is concerning (Wei, James, Merli & Zheng, 2014).

When speaking of obesity rates in general, one might be interested to learn that some rates that are related to weight are not always constant. For example, while obese children who never learn better often become obese adults, the same is not true of people that are thin. Indeed, thinness might persist from childhood to adulthood but it often does not. Quite often, people that are thin as children become obese as adults but the same is often not true in reverse. All of this was verified and compiled during a study of school children in Australia over a six-year period running from 2007 to 2012. While obesity rates varied greatly for that study in terms of socioeconomic status, the opposite was true of people being too thin because the rate of thinness was four to five percent for all groups regardless of socioeconomic status. It was the obesity rates that swelled when looking at the poor vs. The more affluent or at least middle class.

The most effective tool against obesity has been education. This might perhaps explain (at least to some degree) why the poor are usually worse off than others. They tend to be less educated and have less resources to buy healthier foods even if they want to. One way to address that, other than the aforementioned community approach, is to target the parents and guardians of children so that they can learn the healthy habits needed to eliminate or avoid obesity and then pass them along to their children as part of the familial structure and what is passed on to the younger ones. What is key is that the education be intense and long-sustained so as to not allow the child to fall out of hteir good habits too quickly. The teaching needs to be complete and done over time. Evidence-based results and topics that show them what can happen if they do not eat healthily should be covered (Nyberg, Sundblom, Norman, Bohman, Hagberg & Elinder, 2015).

Another aggravating factor are the general disparities and patterns that are seen with black people and other racial minorities. This sort of pattern is even seen in high-black areas like Detroit. However, it is not just black people that are more prone to issues. One study in Detroit looked at a number of races including some stark minorities. Overall, the groups that were looked at with the Jamil et al. (2013) study were whites, blacks, Chaldean and Arabs. In total, no single group was over a quarter when it came to the percentage of people that were "normal weight." The Chaldeans and Arabs were actually better than white people. White people reflected 16.6% at normal weight while Chaldeans had 23.5% and Arabs had 19.3%. Blacks, on the other hand, were not even two thirds of the whites in this regard as they clocked in at just under ten percent (9.9). Interestingly enough, blacks were more likely to health insurance among the group as compared to whites. Indeed, whites had insurance 71.5% of the time while blacks had it 83.5% of the time. The Chaldeans and Arabs were both under 70%. However, when looking at the health maladies that were suffered by the groups, whites come out ahead and it is not.....

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