Childhood obesity risk is increased by racial prejudice

According to a recent research published in JAMA Network Open, children who encounter racial prejudice are more likely to have a higher BMI and a wider waistline in the future. The results suggest that racial prejudice, along with other socioeconomic variables like family poverty, may increase the chance of young people becoming obese.

“Exposure to racial discrimination must be acknowledged as both a social determinant of obesity and a significant contributor to obesity disparities among children and adolescents,” said Adolfo Cuevas, assistant professor of social and behavioral sciences at the NYU School of Global Public Health and the lead author of the study. A significant public health concern in the U.S., childhood obesity affects almost one in five kids and teenagers. kids obesity rates are much higher among Black and Hispanic kids, which, according to study, may be caused by things like poverty, local access to healthful meals, and single-parent families.

A increasing body of studies shows that racial discrimination, a recognized stressor, increases people’s risk for a variety of health problems, including sleep disorders, elevated cortisol levels, and poor mental health. Although racial prejudice has been associated with greater BMI in adults, less is known about how it affects kids and teenagers.

Data from 6,463 9 to 11-year-old participants in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study from 2017 to 2019 were analyzed by the researchers. By asking young people to consider if they had ever experienced unjust treatment because of their race or ethnicity, they were able to gauge their level of exposure to racial prejudice. They assessed the subjects’ waist circumference and BMI, which was computed using their weight and height, a year later.

Even after controlling for well-known socioeconomic risk variables for obesity, such as family income and parental education levels, the researchers discovered that children who experienced more racial prejudice had higher BMIs and wider waist circumferences a year later. They come to the conclusion that limiting early-life exposure to racial discrimination and its negative impacts on wellbeing may help reduce the likelihood of weight gain across the lifetime.

“We only evaluated discrimination for a short period of time, but it’s crucial to understand that ongoing racial prejudice may make obesity risk much higher. Therefore, avoiding or at least lessening the effects of prejudice sooner rather than later may be able to lower the risk of obesity, according to Cuevas, who is also a scholar at the NYU School of Global Public Health’s Center for Anti-Racism, Social Justice, and Public Health.

In order to reduce obesity among the general population, he said, “Researchers, clinicians, educators, and policymakers must work together with communities to establish evidence-based strategies aimed at preventing exposure to racial discrimination.”

Brennan Rhodes-Bratton and Shu Xi from NYU, Danielle Krobath, Jesulagbarami Omolade, and Aniyah Perry from Tufts, and Natalie Slopen from Harvard are among the authors of the research in addition to Cuevas. The National Institutes of Health and various government partners provided funding for the ABCD project.