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Review
. 2023 Dec 18:11:1213033.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2023.1213033. eCollection 2023.

Environmental factors of obesity before and after COVID-19 pandemic: a review

Irena Anna Wolińska  1 , Krzysztof Kraik  2 , Rafał Poręba  3 , Paweł Gać  4 , Małgorzata Poręba  5
Affiliations
Review

Environmental factors of obesity before and after COVID-19 pandemic: a review

Irena Anna Wolińska et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

In past decades the prevalence of overweight and obesity had grown rapidly. There are numerous factors contributing to this unfavorable change in people's health. This review article investigates the environmental factors which may play a role in the prevalence of overweight and obesity and additionally the novel factors which appeared after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the increase in BMI during the lockdown period. Most of the studies reveal that the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdown contributed to the growth of BMI in numerous countries and, eventually the prevalence of overweight and obesity increased. Studies suggest that the physical activity was decreased while sleep time and screen time were increased and the amount of food consumed increased, additionally more processed food with long shelf life was consumed. The diverse environmental factors may have an impact on obesity and overweight development taking into account policy and local school policy issues, socioeconomic status, lifestyle including physical activity, diet habits, and amongst others, more trivial causes such as uninteresting neighborhoods, lack of sense of security outside the place of residence or a long distance from shops. Still, this is the object of debate if air pollution is an environmental risk factor influencing the unfavorable trends towards increasing body weight.

Keywords: COVID-19 pandemic; eating habits; environmental factors; obesity; overweight; pollution.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Mean BMI in WHO regions based on WHO’s Global Health Observatory data (5).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Summary of the article selection process.
Figure 3
Figure 3
A number of studies which found positive, negative or no association between air pollution and body weight based on An et al. (54).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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