Latino Diet Changes Deemed Health Crisis
 Theresa Braine - Associated Press
| | More than 50 percent of Mexican women have body-mass indexes of 25 or more, an indicator of being overweight. |
Mexico City - Urban Latin Americans are experiencing a health crisis based on new eating habits that include fewer traditional foods and less physically active lifestyles, researchers said Friday.
From Pasadena to Mexico City, obesity is epidemic, diabetes rates are skyrocketing, and heart disease and cancer are the leading causes of death among U.S. Hispanics, according to a conference of U.S. and Mexican experts.
"We have always had problems of obesity, but now we are confronting a new problem," said Dr. Hector Bourges, director of nutrition at the National Institute of Medical Science and Nutrition in Mexico City.
"There have always been overweight people, but now it's an epidemic," Bourges said at the conference, sponsored by Oldways Preservation Trust, a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based think tank. "It has grown very rapidly."
People in Latin nations are switching from calcium-rich corn tortillas to refined-flour tortillas, from whole grains to white flour and rice. Their activity level has also plummeted, especially in the United States.
The barriers to eating traditional food range from practical issues to social prejudice. Cecilia Pozo Fileti, a dietitian at Latino Health Communications of Ann Arbor, Michigan, said flour tortillas are more portable than corn because they don't break and they taste all right cold. But corn tortillas have easily absorbed calcium, at least the way they are made back home - soaked in lime overnight and molded by hand.
Traditional foods also tend to have low prestige, said Dr. Miriam Chavez, a senior investigator at the National Center for Nutrition in Mexico City. Processed foods are seen as modern and thus more desirable.
The changes are proving lethal. More than 50 percent of Mexican women have body-mass indexes of 25 or more, an indicator of being overweight, Bourges said. The obesity rate here is the same as in the United States, he added.
"It's partly a problem of globalization," Bourges said. "Their habits were excellent before."
In the Mexican countryside, for example, insects are a common source of protein. At a dinner at the famed restaurant Izote, run by chef and author Patricia Quintana, conference participants from the U.S. sampled fried maguey worms, which look a bit like ruffled french fries, and ant eggs, or escamole, which resemble barley.
Both get put in tacos with a touch of guacamole. Also popular are chapulines, or grasshoppers, which are generally fried to a crispy crunch.
But newer, more convenient foods are a big draw. "Always, new customs are more attractive," said Bourges, adding that the habits "have caused much damage, many deaths."
Esther Garcia-Schuster, a nutritionist in Pasadena, California, says the acculturation process in her mostly Hispanic patients means "their fiber content decreases, intake of antioxidants and phytochemicals decreases and fat intake goes up."
"That's what it is chemically," Garcia-Schuster said, "but the bottom line is that they're eating less fruits and vegetables and less whole grains, and their activity decreases tremendously."
A call to action is needed for Hispanics, who have surpassed African-Americans in the U.S. in rates of obesity and related problems, said K. Dun Gifford, Oldways' president and founder.
"To anybody who pays taxes in the States," Gifford said, "the consequences of the health problems of urbanized Latinos to the American taxpayers is just going to be punishing." |
Vallarta Weddings
News Around the Republic of Mexico | April 2005 
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us