Social, Cultural and Economic Factors Affecting Food Behaviors in Immigrants; a Review Study

Background & objectives:

From a long time ago, immigration has been one of the typical human reactions to the unfavorable conditions of life and a way of trying to improve conditions. In fact, immigration is a reaction of individual or family and decision to change the situation, which is often one of the greatest experiences and decisions of life. During immigration, various social, cultural and economic factors affect life and, consequently, individual eating behaviors. The aim of this study is reviewing the social, cultural and economic factors affecting the food behaviors of immigrants.

This is a review article in which Google scholar, PubMed, and Science Direct were searched to access relevant studies, by keywords including immigrant, food behavior, dietary acculturation, eating habits, social, economic and environmental factors.

In general, it seems that the effects of immigration on peoplechr('39')s eating habits and health and how to change, accept or not accept the culture and food habits are very different and many factors influence it such as personality characteristics of immigrants, socio-economic level of the individual, underlying environmental factors, level of conformity of dominant religion in both countries, the fluency level of the new language and the level of social protection of migrants in the host country.

Different social, economic and cultural factors affect the migratory food behaviors. Undoubtedly, investigating of these effects are essential in planning for improving the nutritional status of immigrants and policy making in this issue.