Social determinants of obesity
While genetic influences are important to understanding obesity, they cannot explain the current dramatic increase seen within specific countries or globally.
In the developing world, women, men, and children from high social classes had greater rates of obesity.
In undeveloped countries the ability to afford food, high energy expenditure with physical labor, and cultural values favoring a larger body size are believed to contribute to the observed patterns.
The phrase first appeared in an "official" publication in 1995, as part of a report from a policy working group investigating grocery distribution and food retailing on behalf of the Low Income Project Team of the UK government's Nutrition Task Force.
[5] The term "food desert" is used to "describe populated urban areas where residents do not have access to an affordable and healthy diet."
The neural networks underlying the complex interactions among stressors, body, brain and food intake are now better understood.
"[11] In another study done by Richardson and her colleagues, "a sample of low-income women with children, we found that perceived stress was directly and positively associated with severe obesity, independent of eating behaviors and diet quality.
With that information, the researchers conducted regression analyses to depict obesity in relation to different socioeconomic parts, such as education.
[14] Similarly, in a study done in Germany, researchers found that "indicators of parental education were most strongly associated with children's obesity.
A study done by Jerica Berge[16] looked only that the interactions at meal times with families and neglected the types of foods they were eating.
In conjunction to eating a meal together, the results showed that table conversations and family dynamics play key roles in lowering the rates of obesity in child and adults.
Children will develop these eating habits that reflect a healthy living style demonstrated from their parents and/or other family members.
Children and adults eating in this type of environment also tend to use technology, like being on their phones or watching television, at the table distracting each other from engaging in conversation.
With these results, they came to the conclusion that the lower literacy a person has, the less knowledgeable they are in regards to the health effects associated with obesity and the more likely they are to underestimate the need to lose weight.
[22] Malnutrition in early life is believed to play a role in the rising rates of obesity in the developing world.
[26] Globalization has made cheap fatty food available in all the nations, greatly increasing fat intake all over the world.
[28] a contrario, a 2017 empirical study demonstrates that globalization, including trade openness, FDI flows, and economic freedom reduce weight gain and obesity among children and youth, supporting the proposition that globalized countries prioritize health because of the importance of labor productivity and human capital due to heightened market competition, ceteris paribus, even if rising incomes might drive high consumption.
