Link between obesity and high birth weights questioned

UC researcher wants to know the link between obesity and high birth weights

July 13, 2013

University of Canterbury (UC) economics and finance postgraduate student Rachel Webb has unearthed a new finding about fast food restaurants while researching the relationship between maternal obesity and high birth weight risk.

In her PhD research Webb needed to investigate issues affecting obesity risk.

``A significant relationship between fast food restaurant density and obesity has been a prominent finding by health researchers,’’ Webb says.

``There are strong correlations between fast food restaurants and obesity risk in a number of studies. However many fail to account for underlying factors that affect both the fast food restaurants location and obesity risk.

``Issues such as ethnicity, whether it is an urban or rural area, age, socio-economic status, level of deprivation of the area, other nearby food options available can all affect both restaurant location and obesity risk.

``It is generally asserted that fast food proximity lowers the cost of eating high calorie food and can lead to higher obesity risk however many dispute that there is a causal relationship.

``A curious finding from my results was that the fast food restaurant density in a city did not have the expected effect on obesity measures. Many of the big chain fast food restaurants were shown to lower the risk of obesity holding other factors constant.

``This finding cannot be explained as merely substitution away from less healthy takeout options such as fish and chips, towards big chain fat food as I found the overall number of fast food outlets per person in a city was generally insignificant. More research into the effect of fast food on obesity is needed.’’

Webb says she is some way off producing confirmed findings But she says initial results are strong enough to cast serious doubt about the effectiveness of measures to reduce the number of big chain fast food outlets or even just regular take out restaurants to reduce obesity.

Webb has just given a paper on birth risk at an international conference in Sydney. Her research is being supervised by UC’s Dr Andrea Menclova.

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