Coming to the land of milk and honey can be hazardous to new immigrants' diet and health.
So says Ilana Redstone Akresh, a visiting professor of sociology at the University of Illinois who recently analyzed dietary assimilation and immigrant health. In her study, Akresh considered the changes in immigrants' diets after coming to the United States and the subsequent relationship between those changes and their Body Mass Index (BMI) and health.
She found that 39 percent of her sample of 6,637 adults reported at least one significant change in their diet. The most commonly reported dietary changes were an increased consumption of junk food and meat.
More than 10 percent of the sample reported eating more junk food in the United States, while more than 8 percent said they ate more meat in America than they ate in their home countries. Nearly 15 percent reported eating fewer vegetables, fruit, fish, or rice and beans. As a consequence of their acquired tastes, many new immigrants are bulking up and becoming less healthy, Akresh says.
Dietary change as an area of assimilation had not been studied, but Akresh believes that "in perhaps no realm moreso than what one eats is assimilation more visible, tangible, and directly experienced."
The changes that immigrants make may have short- and long-term health consequences, the professor says. "Understanding these changes and examining their determinants is an important precursor to a fuller understanding of immigrant health."
For her analysis, Akresh used data from the New Immigrant Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago in 2003. Other findings from her dietary analysis:
- Consuming more junk food is associated with acculturation. Those immigrants who reported consuming more junk food in the United States also have more experience in the country, a higher likelihood of having a spouse from the United States, and a lower likelihood of having a spouse from the same country. They are also more likely to speak English as one of multiple languages at home, to speak English exclusively at work and with friends, and to have a significantly higher average BMI than those who do not.
Immigrants who eat more meat in the United States have been here longer, have more children and live in younger households. They also have fewer years of education, a lower proportion of them are able to speak English well, and they have lower rates of English language use with friends and at work than those who do not consume more meat. Individuals reporting increased meat consumption also have higher household incomes and higher average BMI.
"This pattern depicts immigrants who are perhaps less integrated, yet are doing well enough financially to afford meat. They may not have the nutrition information necessary to accurately assess the value of increased meat consumption or they may choose to ignore this information," Akresh wrote.
- Those who are married are more likely to maintain a diet similar to that which they had prior to immigration, while having a spouse born in the United States is associated with a greater change in diet.
- The fewer changes the immigrant incorporates into his diet, the lower his BMI.
The findings have policy implications, "particularly related to informing immigrants about the pros and cons of selecting the items in the grocery store that they might not be familiar with," Akresh says.
