Juarenses also battle obesity, study finds

By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 01/02/2007 12:00:00 AM MST

JUAREZ -- Juárez, with its slums of wood pallet houses and its low-wage jobs, seems like the last place for an obesity epidemic. But Juarenses battle with weight just as El Pasoans do, especially the poor and children.

Two nutritional studies in the past five years found that 38 percent of middle-school children in Juárez were obese and that 25 percent of poor girls and women in Juárez were obese, higher than the national average of 22 percent.

In the El Paso region, 23 percent of adults are obese, according to the Texas School Physical Activity and Nutrition Project. Statewide in Texas, 15 percent of eighth-graders are obese.

Juarenses "are facing problems that we have on our side of the border," said Ann Pauli, president of the Paso del Norte Health Foundation. "We've never been good at eating fruits and vegetables."

Bad eating habits are compounded in Juárez's colonias by the lack of access to healthful foods, Pauli and other experts said.