Life Styles and Food Habits: Major Causative Elements for Obesity in Canada - Essay Example

Only the articles that have a direct bearing on the topic under discussion will be considered for the literature review. Evidence emerging from various studies points to the lack of a consistent definition for the term ‘sedentary’ and this causes difficulty in measuring it correctly. People generally relate the word to a state where individuals are not physically active or they are sitting idle. A Youth Risk Behavior survey conducted during 1999 has classified people as leading sedentary lifestyle if they are not “participating in sufficient” moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) so as to maintain physical health (Tremblay et al, 2010, p.727). The exercise science field, on the other hand, construes sedentary as the “lack of MPVA” and thus activities such as viewing TV, talking on phone, playing games on computer or lying down on a couch etc are considered as sedentary state (p.727). Research evidence suggests that sedentary lifestyle causes “metabolic dysfunction” and increases the level of cholesterol and glucose apart from contributing to accumulation of body fat (p.730). Thus, it transpires that sedentary behavior can entail in a lot of physical health problems for people, and result in overweight or obesity conditions.

In a study conducted on a sample population of 42612, comprising 19811 men and 22801 women, which represent 19.6 million Canadians in the age range of 20-64 years, the researchers find strong evidence to confirm a “positive association” between hours spent viewing TV and obesity both in male and female populations (Shields & Tremblay, 2008, p.24). This, they argue, establishes the fact that obesity in Canada has “increased substantially” across the population of all ages in both genders (p.19). On the other hand, this study, based on multivariate models, also confirm “modest association” between obesity and computer use in both sexes but it finds no relationship between reading and obesity