Socio-economic,environmental and demographic determinants of rise in obesity among Pakistani women: A systematic review

Nutrition transition is a shift in eating and disease patterns towards diet-nutrition-related noncommunicable diseases (nr-ncds). this shift in many developing countries has been accompanied with changes in behaviours,lifestyles,diets,physical inactivity,smoking and alcohol consumption. in addition to the burden of under-nutrition,nutrition transition has caused a sudden rise in overweight/obesity-related chronic diseases in developing countries. little research has been done in pakistan to explore nutrition transition,and its associated nutrition challenges. the current study attempted to investigate the socio-economic,environmental and demographic determinants of rise in obesity among women of reproductive years (15-49 years) in pakistan. a review of related published literature for a period of 10 years (2005-2015) was carried out. also,data from national nutrition survey (nns-2011) and pakistan demographic and health survey (pdhs 2012-13) was reviewed and used to supplement the published researches from pakistan. for this purpose,a computer-based search was performed on pubmed and pubget to retrieve relevant articles. the major socio-economic and environmental risk factors contributing to the risk of obesity among pakistani women were sedentary lifestyle,lack of awareness,higher rates of urbanisation along with shift in dietary pattern from high-fibre diet to low-fibre,and high-calorie diet. the results of this review highlight the need for designing and implementing of national nutrition policy focussed on improving the awareness of determinants and consequences of nutrition-related illness in pakistan. © 2016,pakistan medical association. all rights reserved.