University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, Little Rock, AR, USA.
Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA.
Obes Rev. 2017 Oct;18(10):1210-1222. doi: 10.1111/obr.12569. Epub 2017 Aug 2.
Increasing interest in relationships between religion and health has encouraged research about religion and body weight, which has produced mixed findings. We systematically searched 11 bibliographic databases for quantitative studies of religion and weight, locating and coding 85 studies. We conducted a systematic review, analysing descriptive characteristics of the studies as well as relevant religion-body weight associations related to study characteristics. We summarized findings for two categories of religion variables: religious affiliation and religiosity. For religious affiliation, we found evidence for significant associations with body weight in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. In particular, Seventh-Day Adventists had lower body weight than other denominations in cross-sectional analyses. For religiosity, significant associations occurred between greater religiosity and higher body weight in both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies. In particular, greater religiosity was significantly associated with higher body weight in bivariate analyses but less so in multivariate analyses. A greater proportion of studies that used a representative sample, longitudinal analyses, and samples with only men reported significant associations between religiosity and weight. Evidence in seven studies suggested that health behaviours and psychosocial factors mediate religion-weight relationships. More longitudinal studies and analyses of mediators are needed to provide stronger evidence and further elucidate religion-weight relationships.
人们对宗教与健康之间关系的兴趣日益浓厚，这促使人们开展了有关宗教与体重的研究，而这些研究的结果喜忧参半。我们系统性地检索了 11 个文献数据库，以查找关于宗教与体重的定量研究，共定位并编码了 85 项研究。我们进行了系统性综述，分析了研究的描述性特征，以及与研究特征相关的宗教与体重之间的关联。我们总结了两类宗教变量的发现结果：宗教归属和宗教虔诚度。就宗教归属而言，我们发现无论是在横断面研究还是在纵向研究中，宗教归属与体重之间均存在显著关联。特别是，在横断面分析中，复临安息日会教徒的体重比其他教派低。就宗教虔诚度而言，在横断面研究和纵向研究中，宗教虔诚度与体重之间均存在显著关联。特别是，在单变量分析中，宗教虔诚度与体重呈显著正相关，但在多变量分析中则不然。采用代表性样本、纵向分析以及仅包括男性的样本的研究中，有更大比例的研究报告称宗教虔诚度与体重之间存在显著关联。有 7 项研究的证据表明，健康行为和心理社会因素在宗教与体重之间的关系中起中介作用。需要开展更多的纵向研究和对中介因素的分析，以提供更有力的证据并进一步阐明宗教与体重之间的关系。
