Relationship between socio-economic situation, economic environment and obesity in adults.

This research was done in order to investigate the relation between socio-economic situation, economic environment and obesity. The participants of the research are the residents in Antalya whose ages vary from 18 to 70. The number of total participants is 487 (212 men and 275 women). The research was done between February 2010 and January 2011. The condition to participate in the research was set as not to be in the maternity period. A survey, which includes general demographics information and nutritional behavior was filled by the researcher. The survey was composed of two parts. The first part of the survey included general demographics information and anthropometric measurements and the second part included questions related to learn and understand the nutritional behaviors of the participants. All the information related to occupation, income status and education information were analyzed carefully in order to classify the participants according to socio economic status. Socio economic status determination scale, developed by Kuppuswamy from India, was used for socio economic classification of the participants. Each participant was assigned a score related to his/her education status, occupation and income status and then classified according to the summation of these scores. 5 socio economic status are determined according to the survey results and they are; upper, upper middle, middle, lower middle and lower classes. In the research, the anthropometric measurements, body mass, height, waist circumference, were measured and BMI?s of the participants were calculated. The evaluation of theses information was done by ?SPSS 17.00? statistical package program on Windows. The average ages of the participants were 35.9±12.2 years. In the research, it was determined that, participants who are classified in lower socio economic status have higher BMI averages. It was extracted from the study that, the upper socio economic status participants have an average BMI of 23± 4.6 kg/m2 and the lower socio economic status participants have an average BMI of 28.7± 7.7 kg/m2. It was noticed that, there is an important statistical relation between the socio economic status and BMI of the participants (p<0.05). The average waist circumference of male participants in upper socio economic status was found as 98.8±15.5 cm, and the average waist circumference of female participants were found as 72.5±11.8 cm. Moreover, average waist circumference of male participants in lower socio economic status were found as average waist circumference of male participants were found as 98.8±15.5 cm, and the average waist circumference of female participants were found as 104±11.4 cm and the average waist circumference of female participants were found as 97.1±27.8 cm. It was determined by the researcher that there are differences between the fruit and vegetables consumption, type of milk consumed, amount of milk consumed, egg consumption per week, type of cheese consumed, type of bread consumed between upper and lower social economic status. The researcher found that, olive oil consumption among all participants are higher than other types of oil. No significant statistical relation between socio economic status and type of oil consumed was found (p>0.05). In this research, it was determined that there is a relationship between socioeconomic status and obesity. Morever, participants who are in lower socioeconomic class have greater BMI and waist circumference values than the other participants.