What is the ratio of obesity in African-American women compared to all U.S. women?

In the U.S., about one-third of all women are overweight or obese, but among African-American women, that rate climbs to 75 percent. So it’s at least twice as much among African-American women as it is among the mainstream. 

How did you go about choosing and studying magazines to determine how each approached weight loss in their articles?

My co-author and I have had a number of joint projects related to health disparities in media coverage and weight loss, obesity, and its corresponding conditions, such as type II diabetes, all of which have received a lot of attention in the medical community in the last decade. We wondered how the media was covering this issue and whether or not there were differences in the way mainstream magazines versus African-American magazines were covering this.

Which magazines did you choose to look at?

We selected three mainstream magazines and three magazines whose primary readership is African-American. We chose them based on the fact that they had large circulation rates and have been around for a long time. Both sets of magazines have large readerships of women. The mainstream magazines were Better Homes and Gardens, Good Housekeeping, and Ladies Home Journal; and the African-American ones were Ebony, Essence and Jet. We looked at the content between 1984 and 2004. 

What did the study find were the messages delivered about effective weight loss in what would be considered African-American publications?

The top strategies covered in both magazine genres were the same, and they’re about getting more exercise and eating fewer calories. That’s a message we hear over and over. However, when you look at the range of strategies offered, mainstream magazines offered more strategies then African-American magazines. In addition, some strategies were likely to be covered more by one genre than the other. Mainstream magazines were twice as likely to offer eating more protein, eating lower fat foods, and eating smaller portions; while the African-American magazines were more likely to focus on covering fad diets and suggest readers rely on God or faith in their diet plans. They were also more likely to suggest limiting or eliminating fast food or junk food. We  also found was that over time, there was more coverage in the mainstream magazines then there was in the African-American press.

Why do you think the message is different from one publication to another?

I’m going to say obviously it’s the rule of media to tailor their content to the audience, so you wouldn’t necessarily expect that there would be identical coverage. However, the concerning factor is that African-American magazine readers were offered fewer options and had less coverage. In addition, some of the strategies offered more often included things like fad diets that are not necessarily evidence-based. It’s very concerning, particularly given that the prevalence of overweight and obesity in African-American women is more than double that of the general population.

Does environment and income also play a role in obesity in the African-American population?

They absolutely do. Environment matters for everyone regardless of race, and income is often a more deciding factor. Coverage in these magazines focused largely on behavioral changes that were individually focused. So eat more fruits and vegetables, for example. But there was very little coverage in either set of magazines related to environmental issues, such as having safer neighborhoods, neighborhood parks, sidewalks and bike paths, or the availability of fresh fruits and vegetables at reasonable costs. There was a story Friday in USA Today about how it’s cheaper in many low-income neighborhoods to buy a Twinkie than a stalk of broccoli. What’s happening is, in my opinion, if you’re telling low-income people that the answer is to eat more fresh fruits and vegetables and they say well it’s not available, then they can’t really do a lot. And then we blame them when they haven’t lost weight.

What would you like to see happen as a result of this study and others like it?

I think that concerned citizens and public health advocates need to push stories to the media about the importance of covering how communities are helping to address the problem, not only in individual ways in terms of offering weight loss classes, but through environmental changes like urban planning or community gardens or bringing supermarkets into low income neighborhoods. But I think it’s important also for advocates to push coverage of effective weight loss strategies and not simply the latest fads. 

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Shelly Campo, PhD

University of Iowa College of Public Health