Social and Physical Determinants of Obesity in Adults

Abstract

Obesity is one of the major health concerns in the United States. Obesity in turn leads to many other chronic health problems like diabetes, cardiovascular disease and many more. This review was done on the social and physical factors that contribute to the obesity epidemic. Social factors that were included in this review were financial stress, post traumatic stress, sleep, marriage and health literacy. Physical factors that were reviewed here were physical activity, natural environment, food environment, worksite settings, pregnancy and genetics. The data was collected from government organizations like National Institute of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Also, peer reviewed articles were selected based on the relevance to this review from the last five years (2011 to 2015). The result of this review was that these social and physical factors were significantly contributing to the major health problem, obesity. Overall, there has been a significant increase in the prevalence of obesity among adults in United States and this review sheds some light on the factors responsible for it.

Overweight and obesity among female adolescents in Nigeria; an emerging, but under-reported epidemic

“…The finding of this study corroborates the findings of several previous studies which have found that socio-economic status, measured by the wealth index in this study, is a determinant of overweight/obesity among different age groups [39][40][41]. However, other studies done within and outside Nigeria have reported other determinants, in addition to household wealth index [18,[41][42][43], which in this study turned out to be merely confounders. This finding is important for policy makers and stakeholders, because it implies that it may be more effective (including costeffectiveness) for interventions against overweight and obesity among female adolescents in Nigeria to target adolescents from richer/richest households.…”

Food Delivery Platform: A Potential Tool for Monitoring the Food Environment and Mitigating Overweight/Obesity in China

“…The intricate determinants for overweight and obesity are discussed in many studies (6)(7)(8)(9)(10)(11)(12)(13). Biologically, overweight and obesity are caused by an imbalance between energy intake and energy expenditure (14).…”

“…Many case studies discussed the associations between food consumption and obesity in adults in China (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32). Recent research shows that rapid behavioral shift to consumption of processed food with low nutritional value and high energy (33, 34) and widespread decreased physical activities (6,(35)(36)(37)(38) contribute to the epidemic of overweight and obesity. Dietary patterns represent a broad picture of food consumption (39).…”

Social position and anthropometric status among adults in the ELSA-Brasil study: a latent class analysis

“…In recent decades, the prevalence of excess weight, including overweight and obesity, has increased rapidly worldwide, representing the fastest growing health issue among the risk factors for chronic non-communicable diseases 1,2 . Excess weight has been attributed to unhealthy diet and physical inactivity, and it is a known risk factor for cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia and asthma, among other health problems 1,3 .…”

“…In low and middle-income countries, the social conditions are one of the factors that potentially contribute to overweight and obesity in different stages of life. For instance, financial stress was associated with higher levels of obesity in North-American adults 2 . In this population , low socioeconomic position in childhood was associated with obesity in adults 10 .…”