Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Fast Food And Obesity Link: An Investigation Of Consumption Patterns And Severity Of Obesity In Pre-Bariatric Surgery Patients, Ginny Garcia-Alexander, Thankam S. Sunil, Pedro Hinojosa

Sociology Faculty Publications and Presentations

We examined selected behavioral factors associated with severity of obesity among pre-operative bariatric surgery patients in the San Antonio area; focusing specifically on the effects of fast food consumption. We used ordered logistic regression to model the effects of behavioral and attitudinal variables on obesity outcomes. Our results indicated that among the behavioral factors, fast food consumption exerted the largest influence on higher levels of obesity. After controlling for several social and demographic characteristics, the effects of fast food consumption remained significant in the model. In fact, for each increase in fast food consumption there was a 26% increase in …