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Unusually high prevalence rates of obesity in four Mexican rural communities
C P Sánchez-Castillo1, J J Lara, A R Villa
1Instituto Nacional de Ciencias Médicas y Nutrición Salvador Zubirán, Dirección de Nutrición, Departamento de Fisiología de la Nutrición, México. claudias@aztlan.innsz.mx
Objective:
To establish the nutritional status of previously studied rural populations.
Design And Subjects:
A total of 139 households with 245 males and 301 females from four relatively isolated Mexican rural communities were randomly selected to be surveyed in 1996.
Results:
Underweight was not a problem in either children or adults. In children <5 y only three (4.2%) were stunted but the age- and sex-specific distributions of body mass index (BMI) in children showed 17% of boys and 19% of girls exceeded the proposed International Obesity Task Force limits for classifying the overweight. Triceps skinfold values were similar to NHANESI values for white USA children. Of the adult men 42% were overweight (BMI 25.0-29.9) and 9% obese; 40% of adult women were overweight and a further 33% obese. Adjusting BMI values with corrected total heights by relating them to measured knee height reduced the BMI of women >50 y by 2.0 units; the male data were essentially unchanged. The prevalence of abdominal obesity in women, based on waist measurements and WHO cut-off points was high with 25% of women having elevated values despite a normal BMI; 43% of the overweight women had substantial increases in waist measurements, indicative of high risk, as did 91% of obese women. The men's waist measurements were greater in relation to both BMI and body fat but the prevalence of values in excess of the suggested sex-specific WHO limits was less than half that of women.
Conclusions:
The high prevalence of overweight and obesity is now evident in poor and relatively isolated rural communities of Mexico.
Sponsorship:
The Chronic Disease Office, from the Ministry of Health in Mexico partially financed this study.