A Healthy Education
by Jennifer Altavilla

When immigrants make the arduous trek to the United States, many bringing little except the clothes on their backs; the last thing they probably worry about is whether their children will become obese. Somehow, the language barrier, the job market, and finding housing all manage to cause more angst than Big Macs and Cheetos. However, recent studies have shown that immigrant children are more likely to become overweight the longer they live in the United States. Thus, the issue becomes not how to feed the children, but what to feed them.

The study, published in 2004 in the Journal of the American Medical Association, used the information from the 2000 census to calculate the Body Mass Index - BMI - of 32,374 Americans, 14% of them immigrants. The calculations showed that 8% of immigrants who have lived in the United States for less than a year are obese. However, 38% of immigrants who have lived in the United States for fifteen years are obese. Twenty-two percent of U.S.-born citizens are obese, a strikingly low figure compared to that of long time resident immigrants.

How is it that immigrants become obese in such a short period of time? The most common reason is that food is more readily available and cheaper in the United States than it is in other countries. Whereas immigrant parents would have to save their pennies to buy food in their native countries, and would have to travel considerable distances to get it, here in the United States they can buy whatever they need at the supermarket. Immigrant parents are not used to having so much food in such a condensed area and thus buy whatever they can afford. The novelty of one stop shopping never grows old to people who used to lack it.

Although food is cheaper and more accessible in the United States, many immigrants still cannot afford high quality food such as produce and lean meat. Thus, although immigrant parents are serving their children more food than they were in their native countries, the quality of food is not as great. In many cases the food they ate in their old countries is healthier than what they eat in the United States. Whole grains, beans, rice, etc. are filling and provide excellent sources of carbohydrates and proteins. Frozen pizzas, chicken nuggets, and hamburgers lack the nutrients that native foods do, but have much more fat. In an article by John Bonifield for CNN, Pat Crawford, co-director of the Center for Weight and Health at the University of California at Berkley said,

"We really would like to encourage immigrant families to continue the kinds of eating that they ate in their country of origin because our studies show that the longer they've been in this county, the more likely that their children are going to get fat."

Children are more likely to get fat if low income parents turn to fast food to feed their children. Fast food is the most accessible, the cheapest, and the most filling food. Parents can get full meals with fries, a hamburger, and drink for the price it would cost them to buy fresh lean meat. For parents that work and do not have time to cook, fast food is a savior. Not only can they grab it on the way home from work, but children love it. Parents feel guilty for being out all day and neglecting their kids, so fast food is a great way to both feed them cheaply and make them happy.

Consuming fast food is also a way for immigrant families to become Americanized. Immigrant children, many of whom speak little English when they arrive, may sometimes want to do whatever they can to fit in with their peers. Eating excessive amounts of McDonalds and consuming processed foods and sweets, none of which immigrant children had in their country of origin, are ways for them to relate to American children. Because most immigrants come to America to build a better life for their children, they will do whatever they can to help their children assimilate. The problem is that they don't know how unhealthy that assimilation can be.

It is possible that those immigrants who do not assimilate are actually healthier than those that do. Immigrants who stay true to their native cultures continue to prepare native dishes, which most times are more nutrient-rich and contain less fat than "American" foods. Those immigrants that hold fast to their native language also are less likely to become obese because the language barrier prevents them from shopping at most supermarkets and eating at fast food restaurants.

However, unassimilated immigrants do not receive the education that their Americanized comrades do. Children of unassimilated parents will most likely not receive the types of job opportunities that other children do and will be stuck doing manual labor and less educationally demanding jobs. It is a double-edged sword: health vs. education. The most reasonable solution to the immigrant obesity problem would be to provide immigrants with two types of education: one academic and one food related. Immigrant parents need to know how to adapt to the American food culture of excess so their children can be both educated and healthy, not one or the other.