| Nutrition and Diet
What is nutrition? Nutrition is the process by which an individual takes in and utilizes food material. To give the body proper nutrition, a person has to eat and drink enough of the foods that contain key nutrients. What is diet? The diet is the sum of all food and drink consumed by a body. Proper nutrition for a human requires vitamins, minerals, proteins, and fuel in the form of carbohydrates and fats. Imbalances between the consumed fuels and expended energy results in either starvation or excessive reserves of adipose tissue, or body fat. Nutrition is the study of the relationship of food and drink to health and disease, especially in determining an optimal diet. Obesity is a nutritional problem and is one of the leading health indicators identified in the government-sponsored Healthy People 2010 initiative.
Dietary factors are associated with 4 of the 10 leading causes of death—coronary heart disease, some types of cancer, stroke, and type 2 diabetes—as well as with high blood pressure and osteoporosis. Data for 1999-2000 show that the proportion of adults aged 20 years and older who are obese increased to 31%. During the same period the trend toward increasing obesity was most pronounced for adult black females (50% of whom were obese) and for adult Mexican American females (40% of whom were obese). The proportion of children and adolescents aged 6 to 19 years who are overweight increased to 15%. The surgeon general warns that 300,000 deaths each year in the U.S. are associated with obesity. The economic cost of obesity in the U.S. was about $117 billion in 2000.
Arizona Statistics: According to the 2007 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey,
The 2006 Arizona obesity rate was 22.9%, as compared with the U.S. rate of 25.1%. However, the rate has more than doubled since
1990, when it was 10.9%
The 2006 obesity rate for males was 23.8% and females 22.0%, as compared with 25.9% and 24.4% for the U.S.
Highest 2006 obesity rates are for people aged 55-64; in Arizona that rate was 33.1%, and the U.S. rate was 31.4%.
Those Arizonans with less than a high school education had the highest 2006 obesity rate--30%, as compared with 29.4% for the U.S.
The highest 2006 Arizona obesity rate (29.9%) occured in those with an income of less than $15,000; nationally the rate was 30.7%
The 2006 obesity rate among those identified as White was 20.0%, and among those identified as non-White, 24.8%. The rate among those identified as Hispanic was 23.4%, as compared with 20.9% among non-Hispanics.3
According to the 2007 Youth Risk Behavior Study, 14.2% of Arizona youth were overweight or obese.4
|
Links To Arizona Websites
|
Links to national Websites
|
|
