Coming to the land of milk and honey can be hazardous to new immigrants' diet and health.
So says Ilana Redstone Akresh (pronounced AY-kresh), a visiting professor of sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the author of a new analysis of dietary assimilation and immigrant health.
In her study, Akresh considered the changes in immigrants' diets after coming to the United States and the subsequent relationship between those changes and Body Mass Index (BMI) and health status.
The most commonly reported dietary changes were an increased consumption of junk food and meat, according to her findings in the not-yet published study.
A third focuses on immigrant intentions and mobility.
For the latter two analyses, Akresh used data from the New Immigrant Survey Pilot study, which followed immigrants who received their green cards in 1996 for one year.
For her examination of dietary change, Akresh used the full New Immigrant Survey, conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago.
The first cohort of the survey was interviewed in 2003.
Immigrants who eat more meat in the United States have been here longer, have more children and live in younger households.
They also have fewer years of education, a lower proportion of them are able to speak English well and they have lower rates of English language use with friends and at work than those who do not consume more meat.
Individuals reporting increased meat consumption also have higher household incomes and higher average BMI.
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