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Are Spanish Surveys Ready to Detect the Social Factors of Obesity?

The social origins of obesity are now recognised: a problem that is initially biological is today a public health problem with a social origin. This paper raises the question of whether the official statistical sources used to understand changes in diet are able to detect this shift in analysis. Aft...

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Autores principales: Díaz-Méndez, Cecilia, Otero-Estévez, Sonia, Sánchez-Sánchez, Sandra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517615/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36141430
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811156
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author Díaz-Méndez, Cecilia
Otero-Estévez, Sonia
Sánchez-Sánchez, Sandra
author_facet Díaz-Méndez, Cecilia
Otero-Estévez, Sonia
Sánchez-Sánchez, Sandra
author_sort Díaz-Méndez, Cecilia
collection PubMed
description The social origins of obesity are now recognised: a problem that is initially biological is today a public health problem with a social origin. This paper raises the question of whether the official statistical sources used to understand changes in diet are able to detect this shift in analysis. After reviewing the social factors that explain obesity, we examine the official Spanish statistics that can inform about dietary changes: the ENS National Health Survey, the EPF Family Budget Survey, and the EET Time Use Survey, all carried out by the Spanish Statistical Office. All of them include socio-demographic variables and some locational variables. However, the lack of health variables in the economic survey and the lack of social variables in the health survey prevent the gathering of reliable scientific evidence to offer solid support in stopping the obesity epidemic. Food has become particularly important as one of the main areas where unhealthy decisions and choices involve high risk; the situation also demonstrates the relationship between social inequality and obesity. Obesity is now understood in a radically different way and the origin of the problem lies in social and cultural factors. The current surveys do not provide the resources to capture the social causality of obesity, but slight modifications would help expand their capabilities and offer reliable scientific evidence to stop the obesity epidemic.
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spelling pubmed-95176152022-09-29 Are Spanish Surveys Ready to Detect the Social Factors of Obesity? Díaz-Méndez, Cecilia Otero-Estévez, Sonia Sánchez-Sánchez, Sandra Int J Environ Res Public Health Article The social origins of obesity are now recognised: a problem that is initially biological is today a public health problem with a social origin. This paper raises the question of whether the official statistical sources used to understand changes in diet are able to detect this shift in analysis. After reviewing the social factors that explain obesity, we examine the official Spanish statistics that can inform about dietary changes: the ENS National Health Survey, the EPF Family Budget Survey, and the EET Time Use Survey, all carried out by the Spanish Statistical Office. All of them include socio-demographic variables and some locational variables. However, the lack of health variables in the economic survey and the lack of social variables in the health survey prevent the gathering of reliable scientific evidence to offer solid support in stopping the obesity epidemic. Food has become particularly important as one of the main areas where unhealthy decisions and choices involve high risk; the situation also demonstrates the relationship between social inequality and obesity. Obesity is now understood in a radically different way and the origin of the problem lies in social and cultural factors. The current surveys do not provide the resources to capture the social causality of obesity, but slight modifications would help expand their capabilities and offer reliable scientific evidence to stop the obesity epidemic. MDPI 2022-09-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9517615/ /pubmed/36141430 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811156 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Díaz-Méndez, Cecilia
Otero-Estévez, Sonia
Sánchez-Sánchez, Sandra
Are Spanish Surveys Ready to Detect the Social Factors of Obesity?
title Are Spanish Surveys Ready to Detect the Social Factors of Obesity?
title_full Are Spanish Surveys Ready to Detect the Social Factors of Obesity?
title_fullStr Are Spanish Surveys Ready to Detect the Social Factors of Obesity?
title_full_unstemmed Are Spanish Surveys Ready to Detect the Social Factors of Obesity?
title_short Are Spanish Surveys Ready to Detect the Social Factors of Obesity?
title_sort are spanish surveys ready to detect the social factors of obesity?
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9517615/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36141430
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph191811156
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