American Fast Food leads Immigrant Kids to Illness

Photograph of a Botero Painting

As we know, obesity in children often leads to early diagnosis of diabetes. If your child develops diabetes, he/she will have to stop eating at McDonalds, Burger King, and Jack in the Box. So either change the diet now, or you will have to later. The consequence of a continued poor diet after diagnosis is lethal.

The study cited below is about immigrants. But this is not the only group affected. Just go to any suburban mall and you will see how many small children may end up diabetic in a few years. Click here for link to report.

- Sons of Immigrants Have High Obesity Levels, Report Finds

By Tara Bahrampour

Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 4, 2009

The sons of immigrants to the United States suffer from alarmingly high levels of childhood obesity, according to a new report funded by the Foundation for Child Development.

Thirty-four percent of kindergarten-age immigrant boys are obese or overweight, compared with 25 percent of the sons of native-born Americans, according to an analysis of data collected by the U.S. Education Department. By eighth grade, that number rises to 49 percent, compared with 33 percent among natives. No similar discrepancy was found among girls.

Adult immigrants do not tend to become overweight until they have been in the United States for a while and become more acculturated, but "children from the newest, least acculturated immigrant families tend to be the most at risk of obesity," said the report, "Moving to the Land of Milk and Cookies," which was released this week. It relied on a federal study that tracked 21,000 children from kindergarten to eighth grade, a quarter of whom were children of immigrants.

The higher level of obesity among sons of immigrants cut across socioeconomic levels and was most pronounced among those whose parents do not speak English, the study found.

It was most prevalent among newly arrived Hispanic immigrants and non-Hispanic white immigrants. Black children of immigrants do not face a higher rate of obesity than their native counterparts, and the problem does not show up among Asian children of new arrivals, although it does appear among children of Asian immigrants who have been in the United States for 15 or 20 years, said Jennifer Van Hook of Pennsylvania State University, the report's lead author. link to complete WP article