Prevalence of Obesity among Immigrants Living in Canada

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When analyzed age wise, fat% increased as age increased both in men and women (Table 2). This might be due to impact of aging on resting metabolic rate as well as on macronutrient oxidation rates besides other factors which supported the study of St-Onge et al ^[17] with similar findings.

For general population, Body Mass Index (BMI) is as indicator of obesity though it is limited to overall body fat assessment as BMI does not provide complete image on the distribution of body fat. The underlying assumption of using BMI to define obesity was that at a given height, higher weight was associated with increased fatness ^[15]. As BMI is the result of body weight over height, population with more muscle mass with less height would show more BMI than the population with same height but less muscle mass but excess fat. Thus, BMI may be a good indicator of over weight for general population but limited to athletic population. So, BMI would be a good indicator for obesity and obesity related occurrence of fat for non-athletic population. In the present study, the studied population was non-athletic with regular daily routine activities and out of any exercises for long time prior to their involvement in fitness program. Hence, BMI could be used as appropriate scale for the presently studied population for measuring obesity. Majority of the men and women of the present study were in overweight category (Table 3). 33.06 % men were in normal range whereas a nominal section of 0.81 % were in underweight category. The observed value was very similar to the study reported by Statistics Canada ^[18] for Canadian adults from 2007 to 2009 where 31.0 % was in normal weight category while only 0.8 % was in underweight category. Out of 66.12 % overweight male of the present study, 38.74 % were in pre-obese category while 27.38 % were in obese category. 17.65 % of obese male population of the present study was in obese class I category whereas a less percent of 6.69 were in obese class II category compared to 3.04 % obese class III category. Very similar value was also reported by Statistics Canada ^[18] for male Canadians where 24.2 % were in obese category comprising of obese class I, II, and III. Likewise when females of the present study were considered, only 45.39 % were in normal weight range category while 1.88 % was in underweight category. A large percentage of women (52.72 %) of the present study were in overweight category out of which 30.96 % were in pre-obese category and 21.75 % were in obese category. Of these 21.75 % obese female, 3.14 % fell in type III category, 6.69 % in type II category and 11.92 % in type I category. According to The Canada Health Measure survey report of 2007 to 2009, 44.7 % of Canadian women were in normal weight category whereas 29.5 % in overweight category and 23.6 % in obese category comprising of type I, II, III. Thus, the observed value for normal weight category was very similar with the 44.7 % in normal weight category for the Canadian women reported by Canada Health Measure survey which also observed higher incidence of over weight and obesity in Canadian females ^[18].

Table 2. Age group wise average height, weight, fat% and BMI and weight category of Canadian male (n=493) and female (478), * SD = Standard deviation

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Age-group wise classification showed that 100 % of men over seventy years were overweight followed by 87.5 % and 83.93 % in the age group of 61-70 and 51-60 yr respectively. The prevalence of overweight in male was further reduced to 78.2 % in 41-50 yr age group followed by 76.52 % in 31 -40 yr group. Surprisingly most of the young male population with age ranged from 15 to 20 years (60 % of total male population studied) were overweight compare to the young girls of same age group (42.2 % of total female population studied) but it was reversed when obesity was considered (Table 2).The reason was not clear but may be due food intake or inactivity. Prevalence of obesity was observed more in the men after 30 year of age than the young population below 30 year and it increased as age went up (Table 3). Similarly, prevalence of obesity was more in women over 30 year than the women below 30 year (Table 2). The observation in the present study was very similar with the findings of Shields et al ^[19] reported in Statistics Canada ^[16] where mean BMI rose with age both for males and females.

Table 3. BMI of Canadian male (n=493) and female (n=478)

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It was well known fact that overweight and obesity were the result of energy imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended though the causes and contributors to obesity are a complex phenomenon and depends on various factors like genetic, environment-social and environmental, ethnicity and food habit and some pathological conditions. But in most cases, an increased intake energy rich foods that high in fat and sugars associated with decreased physical activity due to sedentary nature of many forms of work, changing mode of transpiration and increasing urbanization were the some of reasons behind obesity and overweight ^[2]. The studied population was from different countries migrated to Canada and living in Toronto for the past 15 years but maintaining their own ethnical eating habit and diet. Most of the men and women were with sedentary life style and maintaining there own eating habits, which were basically carbohydrate based ethnical food containing more fats, spices and oils for ethnical way of food preparation which was revealed during the nutritional counselling for the present study.

Table 4. 95% confidence interval for fat % and BMI of male and female at different age groups

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Table 5. The International Classification of adult underweight, overweight and obesity according to BMI (Adapted from WHO 1995,WHO 2000,WHO 2004)

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