Trend of Obesity, Socio-Economic Status and Nutrient Intake of Overweight and Obese Working Women

Abstract

Obesity is an important public health problem in today’s era. Obesity occurs as a result of positive energy balance in the body. One of the reason for the obesity is the nutrition transition which is based on socio – economic conditions (such as education, occupation and per capita income) and sometimes in individual social background. The objective of the present study is to assess the trend of obesity in among different socio – economic status (SES) of overweight and obese working women and their nutrient intake. For this, cross – sectional study was conducted on 200 working women (respondents) and the respondents were selected by purposive sampling technique. Pretested and predesigned questionnaire – cum – interview schedule was used for data collection. Anthropometric measurements were taken by standard technique (Jelliffe, 1966). The values of percent body fat (PBF) and visceral fat (VF) were taken by Omron Body Composition Monitor; HBF 212. The result revealed that 85.7 percent of the overweight respondents belong to upper lower SES category and among obese grade I respondents 28 percent of the respondents come in upper middle SES category. Significant association was observed between health risk parameters like height (F= 16.55, P < 0.01), weight (F= 17.33, P < 0.01), BMI (F= 3.97, P < 0.01) and PBF (F= 4.32, P < 0.01) with different categories of SES. In context of dietary intake significant association of SES found with fat (F= 5.67, P < 0.001), calcium (F= 10.43, P < 0.001) and total fibre (F = 3.14, P < 0.05). Correlation between SES, health related risk parameters and nutrient intake was observed from the value of Pearson Correlation coefficient (r). In context of health risk parameters the SES shows positive correlation with height, weight, body mass index (BMI) and VF. In the arena of nutrient intake, SES shows positive correlation with protein, fat, calcium and negative correlation with total fibre. Therefore, it may be concluded that not only SES play role in adiposity but it may be due to sedentary lifestyle, changing eating pattern, lack of physical activity, hormonal imbalance, genetics factors etc be the reason for their overweight and obesity.

Keywords: Socioeconomic status, Overweight, Obesity, BMI, Percent body fat, Visceral fat.