Immigrants to U.S. Gain Something Extra: Weight
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CHICAGO – Long-term exposure to American culture may be hazardous to immigrants’ health.
A new study found that obesity is relatively rare in the foreign-born until they have lived in America – the land of drive-thrus, remote controls, and double cheeseburgers – for more than 10 years.
Only 8% of immigrants who had lived in America for less than a year were obese, but that number jumped to 19% among those who had been here for at least 15 years. That statistic compared with 22% of American-born residents surveyed. The study, published in today’s Journal of the American Medical Association, shows the flip side of the American dream of finding a better life in the land of plenty.
“Part of the American dream and sort of life of leisure is that you also have some of the negative effects, and obesity is one of the major side effects of the success of technology and just having a life of leisure,” said co-author Dr. Christina Wee of Harvard Medical School. “It’s a double-edged sword.”
Previous studies have shown that immigrants tend to have healthier habits, including less smoking and drug use, than American-born residents, and longer life spans. Researchers suspect that is at least partly because those who choose to immigrate could be unusually healthy, since uprooting to another country requires strength and vitality. But the earlier studies did not look at how obesity rates among immigrants changed over time. The link between obesity and the number of years in America was found in white, Hispanic, and Asian immigrant groups. It was not seen in foreign-born blacks, but their numbers in the study were too small to draw any conclusions, said lead author Dr. Mita Sanghavi Goel of Northwestern University in Chicago.
“Trends in obesity among immigrants may reflect acculturation and adoption of the U.S. lifestyle, such as increased sedentary behavior and poor dietary patterns,” they wrote. “They may also be a response to the physical environment of the United States, with increased availability of calorically dense foods and higher reliance on labor-saving technologies.”
Dr. Goel said it makes sense that exposure to America’s fast-food culture would eventually rub off, but she said she was surprised by the magnitude of the change.