DOI: 10.36347/sjams.2014.v02i01.0068

Pages: 321-327

This is a population based cross sectional study conducted over a period of one year from February-2009 to March 2010, the study was conducted in selected villages and one town of district Anantnag of Kashmir valley. This study is the first analysis of obesity prevalence in rural and urban adults using body mass index classification with measured height and weight. Multistage and multiphasic sampling technique was utilized in this study to screen the obese subjects and in which first of all people in the selected sample had been assessed for obesity, based on WHO classification of obesity according to BMI in age group of 18-45 years. All the households falling in the selected rural and urban areas,were completely enumerated and after line listing the households, each household was visited and only the subjects having age of 18-45 years were included in this study and this comprised of 5107 subjects, then identified obese cases with the help of height and weight techniques. Only those people who had simple obesity were included in the study. People having secondary obesity, drug induced obesity and pregnant ladies were excluded from this study. The obesity prevalence was 6.61 among rural compared to 8.34% among urban population (P = .035). The overall prevalence of obesity was 7.05% in our study which include 5107 people, in which 360 came out to be obese CONCLUSIONS: Statistically significant (p <0.005) differences in the prevalence of obesity were observed in urban and rural population. Residents of urban areas were found to be more obese 8.34% as compared to rural people 6.61%.This is probably because of sedentary life style and better socioeconomic status of urban residents, which are risk factors for many diseases including obesity. Also urban residents tend to eat out in restaurants and food outlets .Besides they consume a great proportion of protein and fat and smaller proportion of carbohydrate.