Socio-political impact of nutritional programs for minorities in the United States

“Recent reports argue that racial discrimination is not only a critical civil rights issue, but also an important topic of scientific inquiry”. Discrimination is associated with poor mental health and nutritional health for Blacks and Hispanics. A correlation is found between stress, trauma, oppression, health care barriers, and socioeconomic disadvantages. Negative outcomes are compounded by the fact that government assistance programs in the United States for minorities do not generally take into account the cultural characteristics of different ethnic groups. That is the case of the nutrition assistance programs. Weight loss programs are often erroneously implemented as they focus on the needs of the population in general, resulting ineffective for most ethnic groups and thus increasing the obesity index. BABY (Better weight for A Better You), a program designed for overweight/obese Black and Hispanic postpartum women, applies basic good nutrition concepts to the individual's cultural and ethnic background; we have been able to show that the weight loss process, self esteem recovery and reintegration as active members of society occurred much quicker through programs that are designed with the groups' ethnicity in mind. It is imperative to educate the governmental system on the benefits of designing and implementing programs for minorities that are not only linguistically sensitive but most importantly, culturally appropriate.