Juarenses also battle obesity, study findsBy Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
El Paso TimesArticle Launched:01/02/2007 12:00:00 AM MSTJUAREZ -- Juárez, with its slums of wood pallet houses and its low-wage jobs, seems like the last place for an obesity epidemic. But Juarenses battle with weight just as El Pasoans do, especially the poor and children.
Two nutritional studies in the past five years found that 38 percent of middle-school children in Juárez were obese and that 25 percent of poor girls and women in Juárez were obese, higher than the national average of 22 percent.
In the El Paso region, 23 percent of adults are obese, according to the Texas School Physical Activity and Nutrition Project. Statewide in Texas, 15 percent of eighth-graders are obese.
Juarenses "are facing problems that we have on our side of the border," said Ann Pauli, president of the Paso del Norte Health Foundation. "We've never been good at eating fruits and vegetables."
Bad eating habits are compounded in Juárez's colonias by the lack of access to healthful foods, Pauli and other experts said.
In the unpaved, hilly neighborhood of Anapra, for instance, residents have few options for grocery shopping, other than the mini-stores local entrepreneurs open inside their houses. The stores mostly sell dry and pre packaged foods. Most residents don't have transportation. If they could travel to buy food, fruits and vegetables would likely be too expensive, Pauli said.
A 2002 study of 500 girls and women living in poor areas in Juárez found that 25 percent didn't eat cereals every day, 30 percent didn't eat fruits every day but almost half drank sodas four times or more a week.
FEMAP, the Juárez non-profit that conducted the study, launched a nutrition program aimed at Juárez's poor called Que Sabrosa Vida, or "what a delicious life." It aims to teach healthful ways to cook simple foods.
"We're not trying to get them to eat sushi and tofu," said Anna Aleman, FEMAP executive director. "It's about cooking traditional food but with vegetable oil, not lard. We teach people that it's better to eat beans from the pot, rather than refried, and to add avocados and nuts to their diets." The group also offers free exercise classes and presentations about diabetes.
In the women's study, the average Juárez woman stood 5-foot-2 and weighed 162 pounds. Only 22 percent of women had a normal body mass index, the study found. The highest percentage of overweight women was among those younger than 20. A joint FEMAP, Paso del Norte Health Foundation study in 2001 found 55 percent of 1,400 Juárez middle-schoolers studied were overweight or obese.
Obesity in Mexico
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