Central America and Caribbean

In Central America and the Caribbean before the arrival of Christopher Columbus and the subsequent European colonization, there is some evidence that obesity existed in the Aztecs and other cultures seen through surviving statues. However, it has been suggested that the shape of these figures might be as much to do with exaggerated style and possibly to help their balance than to do with accurate representation of the size of people during this period.

The early European settlers in the Caribbean and Central America did not suffer much from obesity, and neither did the slaves brought over to work the plantations. However, with many of the plantations growing sugar, a primary cause of obesity, it seems to be likely that members of some of the European plantation families might have become obese. By contrast, given their hard working schedules, few slaves would have become obese except perhaps a handful of household slaves, especially those who were involved in work in the preparation of food or connected with the refining of sugar. Certainly, sugar seems to have been an early cause of obesity with recent studies surveying some of the population of Port-au-Prince, the capital of Haiti, have shown that there is an inherited glucose intolerance which in some people has developed into diabetes, and has shown itself in abdominal obesity.

There have been a number of recent studies of obesity among the former slave populations of the Caribbean and although these people share a common genetic heritage, their environment varies considerably. Curiously, an important study by T. Forrester and colleagues of the Tropical Metabolism Research Unit, University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica, surveying people in Barbados, Jamaica, and St. Lucia has shown that obesity levels are significantly higher in areas where the gross national product is higher, showing a clear link between wealth and obesity.

Today, the glucose intolerance along with a much larger diet and less exercise has contributed to a large rise in obesity rates throughout the Caribbean, with obesity having doubled in the Caribbean in the last 10 years. This has led to increases in diabetes mellitus, hypertension, and various types of heart diseases. Indeed, according to an October 2004 report by Fitzroy J. Henry, director of the Caribbean Food and Nutrition Institute in Kingston, Jamaica, to the Caribbean Commission for Health and Development, obesity is now the underlying cause of most deaths in the English-speaking Caribbean. This is even more marked with women, and the body mass index shows the greatest occurrence of obesity in people aged 45–54 years living in Belize. The main cause has generally been the change from nonsedentary jobs to sedentary jobs, which certainly helps explain some of the higher obesity rates in Jamaica and Barbados. However, this alone does not explain the rise in obesity in young children, with the increasing consumption of unhealthy food clearly being important. This has led to a study of childhood obesity that has shown massively increased levels in Antigua, Dominica, and St. Kitts and Nevis during the 1990s, with that of Nevis reaching a rate of 10 percent in the years 1990–99. Curiously, the rise of obesity in St. Vincent during the same period was much less marked.

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