Poverty and obesity from the University of Houston

Last week's Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday (Mother's Day) on Daily Kos brought more news about poverty and malnutrition.  Consider this a follow up to both Nutrition news from SDSU and Nutrition and poverty from campuses on the campaign trail.

University of Houston: Long-Term Childhood Poverty Contributes to Young Adult Obesity Rates
Research from Department of Health and Human Performance, Texas Obesity Research Center
By Marisa Ramirez
May 8, 2014

A new study from the University of Houston Department of Health and Human Performance (HHP) finds childhood poverty reaches into the lives of white, Hispanic and African-American young adult women, contributing to their propensity to be overweight and obese.

“We know that having a low socioeconomic status during childhood contributes to children being overweight or obese,” said HHP’s Daphne Hernandez, who also is an executive board member of the UH Texas Obesity Research Center. “We’ve found a connection between the long-term exposure to poverty during childhood and obesity rates among young adult woman.”

Hernandez examined how repeated exposure to poverty during childhood impacts a young adult’s risk of being overweight or obese. The results are published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

As I told my students this week, poverty leads to malnutrition.  Not only is starvation a form of malnutrition, overconsumption of cheap, fattening food leading to obesity is, too.  This study confirms that connection between poverty and obesity.