Fast food consumption and obesity among women in Shah Alam / Noor Razilah Abd Rafar

Objective: To investigate the relationship between fast food consumption and obesity among women in Shah Alam, Malaysia.
Methods: The research was conducted from 15 August until 12 September 2008. Two hundred twenty people were asked to answer a structured questionnaire about demographic characteristics, prevalence of fast food consumption, dietary intake and behaviour and other factors that contribute to obesity. The data were analyzed by using statistical package for social sciences SPSS software (version 12.0) to interpret the accurate statistical result. Chi-square test was conducted to evaluate the correlation between frequency of fast food consumption and obesity while non-parametric Spearman's rank order correlations were conducted to evaluate correlation between the frequency of fast food consumption and obesity with dietary intake/behaviour.
Results: This study found that obesity among women in Shah Alam was significantly associated with frequency of fast food consumption. Frequency of fast food consumption was significantly associated with increase in sweetened drink consumption, decrease in vegetables and milk intake.
Conclusion: Findings from the study showed that high frequency of fast food consumption may result in obesity among women and gave a bad impact on dietary intake and behaviour. Lack of physical activity was also one of the determinant factors of obesity.