January 20, 2005

Research: Immigrants beware: Living in the U.S. is fattening

John Kannenberg

By Elizabeth Crown

Immigrants who have lived in the United States for at least 15 years are nearly as obese as U.S.-born adults, according to an article in the Dec. 15 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Immigrants generally originate from countries where the prevalence of obesity is lower than that of the United States, but acculturation to U.S. norms over time may lead to an increasing prevalence of obesity among this population, said the study’s lead author Mita Sanghavi Goel, M.D., a researcher in general internal medicine at the Feinberg School of Medicine.

Immigrants also face more barriers to quality health care and are less likely to receive preventive health care than persons born in the United States, Goel said.

Goel and co-researchers from Harvard University also found that immigrants are less likely than U.S.-born people to discuss diet and exercise with their doctors.

Over 127 million American adults are overweight and almost 70 million are obese or severely obese. The high prevalence of obesity in the U.S. population has produced a major burden of obesity-related illness and death.

Immigrants are the fastest growing segment of Americans, comprising more than 11 percent of the total U.S. population.

The investigators surveyed almost 32,400 eligible people. About 14 percent were foreign born and generally older and had lower annual household incomes; less education; lower illness burden; and less access to good health care than U.S.-born respondents.

Fewer of the foreign-born respondents were obese compared with respondents born in the United States, but they were more sedentary than U.S.-born respondents.

The proportion of overweight and obese foreign-born individuals increased with longer residence in the United States.

After less than a year in the United States, the prevalence of obesity among foreign-born persons was 8 percent. In contrast, the body mass index of foreign-born respondents living in the United States for at least 15 years approached that of U.S.-born respondents, with 41 percent at normal weight, 38 percent overweight and 19 percent obese — compared with 41 percent, 35 percent and 22 percent of the U.S.-born, respectively.

The researchers found that body mass index did not increase substantially until after the foreign-born respondents had lived in the United States for at least 10 years, suggesting a threshold effect.

About 18 percent of foreign-born respondents reported discussing diet and eating habits with a health care provider compared with 24 percent of U.S.-born respondents.