Immigrants' Sons More Likely to Be Obese, Report Finds - washingtonpost.com: 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, whereas "children from the newest, least acculturated immigrant families tend to be the most at risk of obesity," said the report, released this week, which relied on a federal study that tracked 21,000 children from kindergarten to eighth grade, a quarter of whom were children of immigrants.
