Interface between Severe Obese and Food-Related Labor Activity

Abstract

Obesity is a multifactor disease which involves a large number of determinants in its etiology. The social bias that the obese person endures may be more harmful than the health problems arising from the ‘disease’. The interface between severe obesity and food-related labor activity will be investigated. Current cross-sectional, descriptive and documentary survey involves subjects of both sexes with severe obesity registered in the Program for Bariatric Surgery at the University Hospital of the state of Alagoas, Brazil, during pre-operation monitoring. Data on sex, age, body mass index (BMI), occupation, education, income, co-morbidity and lifestyle were available from medical records and records on outpatient nutrition and social service variables. Further, 132 subjects were studied: 114 (86.5%) females and 18 (13.5%) males, aged 34 ± 9.5 years and BMI 47.4 ± 4.69 kg/m². Moreover, 45% had no fixed income, prevalent (64.5%) occupation involved informal labor activity related to food; 36% completed high school. Co-morbidities prevalent were 17% diabetics; 51% hypertensive, 54% dyslipidemic, 87.15% sedentary; 6.81% smoking and 5.30% alcohol consumption. These data agree with those of other research in the area, where the condition of severe obesity is a determinant of social exclusion, featuring unemployment, informal work and low wages. Results show that a close relationship between weight gain and food-related labor activity may exist in this particular group.