Discussion Post on Culture and Obesity

Discussion Post on Culture and Obesity
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1 Why are some cultural/ethnic groups disproportionately affected by obesity?
Obesity is one of the most pressing issues in the medical community worldwide, resulting in many chronic diseases that increase the mortality rate of the affected people. The World Health Organization defines obesity as the unwarranted increase in body fat, which deposits in the blood vessels in the major organs within the body, resulting in functional dysfunction in the system. Eventually, the accumulation becomes excessive, leading to an increase in the mortality rate. The rate of obesity increased more fantastic than four times between 1975 and 2015. In 2016, the percentage of overweight and obese people worldwide was 39% and 13%, respectively, equivalent to more than six hundred fifty million individuals. In fact, life expectancy also began to diminish in the twenty-first century, demonstrating the negative impact of obesity. However, obesity does not affect people equally. Many factors result in unequal predisposition, especially for some cultural and ethnic groups (Irandoost et al., 2019).
The first reason for the disproportionate increase in obesity in some races or ethnicities is social representation related to cultural norms. An example of this is the Kurdish people of Iran. Their culture prefers bodies that follow the criteria for “normal obesity,” defined as a large body with a non-bulging abdomen. This is the standard of social acceptance in their community, reflecting balanced nutrition based on the individual’s diet. Normal obesity is also described as an appropriate amount of back fat. Their obesity is characterized only by the physical definition, but they are socially accepted because the type of body is considered the best for the functioning of everyday life. Moreover, in their community, normal obesity is highly associated with the capacity to achieve a higher social status because these people tend to have excellent intellect and skills; thus, they are regarded with social respect secondary to possible prestige in the future. Aside from the social norm related to the social status, families in this community also like their children to be obese, including their daughters-in-law and grandchildren, making normal obesity a social representation of the ability to provide in general (Irandoost et al., 2019).
The second factor is genetics, specifically, the gut microbiota phenotype in each race. Previous studies revealed that the decrease in gut microbiota is highly associated with obesity. However, an increase in gut microbiota is neither associated with the increase nor the decrease in the individual’s predisposition to obesity. On the other hand, other studies investigated the same subject, but the analysis yielded the opposite result. Therefore, the studies on the association between gut microbiota and obesity have inconsistencies (Stanislawski et al., 2019).
The last factor is the usual diet of some races. An example of this is the Black population, whose diet mainly consists of carbohydrates and meat, increasing the total caloric intake. Additionally, they take in a minimal amount of saturate...