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provide effective dietary education and interventions, we need to
understand people's background and health beliefs. Immigrants from
different cultures generally tend to change their behaviors and attitudes
and adapt to American culture to varying degrees. This is known acculturation.
Acculturation has been linked to dietary behavior, meanwhile, acculturation
has been found to be positively associated with education level and
socio-economical status. However, how acculturation status of immigrants
within a certain demographical group influences his or her dietary
behavior remains unclear.
Chinese immigrants
provide a good demographic example of studying acculturation due
to their long history of immigration to America and the recent demographic
change in Chinese immigrants with the arrival of a large number
of Chinese scholars, students and professionals, especially in high-tech
industries.
Earlier cross-cultural
studies showed that Chinese and other Asian immigrants significantly
increased their fat intake after immigration to the U.S. while other
studies showed that western dietary acculturation was significantly
associated with an increase in fruit and vegetable intake after
emigrating from China. Meanwhile, younger age, high education, employment
outside the home and length of time in America are strong predictors
of acculturation.
On the other hand, non-immigrants,
who remain entirely within their native society, are exposed to
the effects of globalization through their society's transition
and through their high-tech professions. With the economic growth
and globalization, China has been undergoing a remarkable, but undesirable
and rapid dietary transition over the past ten years. Clear evidence
indicates that high- income urban Chinese people currently consume
a high fat and low vegetable diet. For instance, less than 4% of
the Chinese adults consumed a low-fat diet in 1997, down from over
18% in 1989, and over 60% of adults residing in urban areas consume
higher-fat diet. As a result, from 1989 to 1997, the proportion
of overweight or obese men more than doubled from 6.4.0% to 14.5%
and the proportion of overweight or obese women increased 50% from
11.5% to 16.2%. Altered diet was demonstrated critical factors contributing
to the acceleration of cardiovascular disease and other chronic
disease epidemics.
Therefore, the
conflicting results in earlier research suggest that there is need
to conduct an in-depth study about acculturation and dietary behavior
that excludes the confounding factors of social economic status
and education level. Also, to study acculturation associated with
dietary behavior change, we need to employ a control group back
in China.
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