Madelyn Bradley¹, Justin Do², Juleene Moritz¹ and Shasha Zheng³*

¹Department of Nutrition Science, California Baptist University, USA
²Department of Biological Sciences, University California San Diego, USA
³Department of Health Sciences, California Baptist University, USA

*Corresponding Author: Shasha Zheng, Department of Health Sciences, California Baptist University, USA.

Received: June 19, 2021; Published: July 28, 2021

Abstract

Obesity is becoming increasingly prevalent among US adolescents due to various factors such as food preference, availability, and social condition: however, rates of obesity in Native American adolescents are comparatively much higher than their counterparts as differences of as much as 7.2% have been reported between Native American and white adolescents. Given extensive study highlighting the highly harmful effects to overall health that consuming trans fats has been linked to, this study investigated the dietary intake levels of trans fats by Native American adolescents and explored the implications in regard to their health in terms of BMI. This was done by collecting macronutrient intake levels of adolescents aged 14-18 at Sherman Indian High School. This information was collected from participants using the Harvard School of Public Health Adolescent Questionnaire (HSPH YAQ) for an eight-week period, the data then sorted participants into appropriate dietary groups using statistical software from Cal Baptist University (CBU). The results of the analysis indicated that there was a statistically significant difference in mean trans fats intake between no risk groups (normal and underweight) and at-risk groups (overweight and obese) (p ≤ 0.05) in male adolescents, however statistically significant findings for Native American female adolescents were not observed. This suggests that trans fats intake could be contributing to the high levels of obesity among Native American adolescents. Furthermore, it is of note that this study shows that production and consumption of trans fats are still happening on a day-to-day basis, and a continued effort must be made to eliminate all foods with trans fats from being manufactured and distributed.

Keywords: Native American; Adolescents; Obesity; Nutrition; Trans Fats; Dietary Intake

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Citation

Citation: Shasha Zheng., et al. “Measuring Trans Fats in Native American Adolescents". Acta Scientific Nutritional Health 5.8 (2021): 66-71.

Copyright

Copyright: © 2021 Shasha Zheng., et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.