Urban-rural Difference in Obesity Rate was not seen among First-year Iwate University Students

Official statistics indicate that adolescents in the Tohoku district exhibit unusually high rates of obesity, especially in the district’s rural areas. At the same time, studies from other countries have shown that higher obesity rates are associated with lower levels of education, and lower obesity rates with higher levels of education. To determine how these two trends interact in northern Japan, we conducted a crosssectional study of obesity rates among freshmen at a national university in the Tohoku district. A total of freshmen from the Aomori and Iwate prefectures were classified according to the obesity rate in their hometown, as reported in official prefectural statistics, into three categories as follows: normal, with an obesity rate of < 12.5 ％ ; relatively high, with an obesity rate of 12.6 ％− 14.9％ ; and high, with an obesity rate of > 15.0％ ; each of these categories was also divided according to gender. We compared mean BMIs and obesity rates, and found no evidence of obviously higher mean BMIs or obesity rates in male or female freshmen from rural areas. In addition, there were no obese students（BMI ≥ 30 kg/㎡）among the 78 freshmen from high-obesity regions. These results may indicate that body weight control through diet and physical activity is more common among relatively well-educated adolescents in rural areas, i.e., those who will attend university