Food Choice and Obesity in Black America: Creating New Cultural Diet [Hardcover]

Anthropologist Eric Bailey uses a cultural and holistic analysis of African American food preferences to show how black Americans generally perceive health, body image, food, dieting, physical fitness, and exercise. As is true of Americans overall, black Americans are becoming more overweight and obese than ever before. So, too, they are seeing the consequences: heart attacks, strokes, hypertension, and Type II diabetes at earlier and earlier ages. Bailey offers a new cultural diet for black Americans and a prescription for working collectively, not only to understand this critical health issue, but also to establish a lifestyle strategy that will be both effective and manageable.Eric J. Baileyis a Medical Anthropologist and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Family Medicine at East Carolina University. In earlier roles, he served as Program Director for the Masters in Public Health Program in Urban Public Health at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, as well as Health Scientist for the National Institutes of Health National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities.

The very existence of this book, a research-based cultural approach to dietary change, is noteworthy. Bailey begins by leading the reader through nutrition-related health problems common to Americans and particularly prevalent among African Americans: overweight and obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. What is different is that he then considers African American cultural perspectives on factors such as body image, exercise, and food choice. He concludes by proposing a new approach to lifestyle change for African Americans. Bailey uses a direct writing style and includes data from his research in this work, which has a textbook layout with chapter objectives and review questions, making it appropriate for college lecture format&. This is a valuable, timely complement to general food and culture titles&.Highly recommended. All collections. Choice

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