How Environment Influence Obesity

In Roland Sturm and Ruopeng An’s 2014 article “Obesity and Economic Environment,”

obesity epidemic is mainly attributed by the changes of economic and policy environment, social

environment and physical environment (p. 1). The author uses traditional narrative format to

show an excellent review with the topic of relationship between obesity and change of economic

environment (p. 2). Based on previous research, a common conclusion is that groups or

geographical diversity have little influence on obesity epidemic (p. 2-3). Sturm and An (2014)

further mention that the economic environment nowadays, is quite different from previous period

of time, which changes human’s habits and mainly leads to higher possibility of obesity (p. 5-9).

Furthermore, typical features in building environment and some experience of policy making

play essential roles to decrease fat population. Though Sturm and An fail to clarify the

relationship between environment and obesity possibility clearly and logically, his point of view

is still firm, and both content and structure are quite relevant to the main statement.

The authors’ brilliant review to point out the link between the change of economic

environment and increasing obesity population, yet there is still some cliché in this article as well

as weak relationship among the sub-points (p. 5-9). When refer to economic environment, the

author report abundant background information about the economic environment’s development

at beginning, which involves changes among food supply, food cost changes and food quality (p.

5-8). Furthermore, Sturm and An report several hypotheses to illustrate the interconnection of

economic condition and obesity. With sufficient data from different survey, audience is able to

get an entire picture of present economic situation. However, too much background knowledge

practically confused the reason why economy influence portion of obesity (p. 5-7). Which means,

fraction of present economy data is too strong, which indicates explanation is a little weaker.
This part would have been more convinced and easier to understand if the authors had explained

more information about hypotheses, especially the reason involving consume change.

This article, however, is significantly reliable since author use the data from several

different sources as well as diagrams. In the article, Sturm and An (2014) use figures to reveal

the discipline body mass index (BMI) trend across the group (p. 2). BMI will decrease with

educational increasing, and the race and gender will influence the obesity possibility (p. 3-5).

Meanwhile, other figures with comparing of BMI and districts, time – different area diagram are

plotted in authors’ review (p. 3-5). Meanwhile, the author’s points are based on different and

stable source, such as American Cancer Society (p. 4) and Bureau of Labor Statistics (p. 4). This

reliable data and diagram works as a firm foundation of this review to make Sturm and An’s

points more convincing.

Meanwhile, each individual part of this article is quite relevant to the main parameter

inflecting obesity epidemic, which is the change of environment. In trends analyzing, the author

quote and plot several diagram with different dependent variable in different period of years,

which directly performance a dynamic relationship between social environment associating

index and date (p. 2-4). Moreover, Sturm and An emphasis the comparing of resident consumes

in various of time when researching on economic environment. It could be regarded as stating

the influence from changing. Therefore, with plotting time dependent graphs and contrast, Sturm

and An successfully provide us a strong point that altering of environment predominates in

obesity epidemic.

In conclusion, with comprehensive analysis on the survey and data in health, economic

and social fields, Sturm and An show their strong and innovative insight that environment

change in social, economic and physical area determine the obesity epidemic. It seems that, the
author covers each corner of obesity research, which is comprehensive. There is, perhaps, too

much illustration information so that readers are confused the main points. Thus, it would have

been more clear if the authors had modified the structure of supporting paragraph to emphasis

more evident about the relationship between environment change and obesity.
 References

Sturm, R., & An, R. (2014). Obesity and economic environments. CA: A Cancer Journal for

Clinicians, 64(5), 337-350.