Federico Dickinson

• Dr.
• Senior Researcher at Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute

Objetivo: Describir la diversidad dietética (DD) de un grupo de mujeres embarazadas del municipio de Mérida, Yucatán. Métodos: Se aplicó un cuestionario socioeconómico y tres recordatorios de 24 horas (R-24) en días no consecutivos a 83 mujeres embarazadas. La DD se evaluó a nivel individual de acuerdo a la puntuación Mínima de Diversidad Dietétic...

In this observational study, our aim was to analyse the association between pre-pregnancy BMI and adequacy rates of energy and macronutrient intakes in a sample of pregnant women from Yucatan, Mexico. From September to December 2019, we collected data on socioeconomic, pregnancy, and dietary characteristics, and took anthropometric measurements of...

Early‐life conditions shape childhood growth and are affected by urbanization and the nutritional transition. To investigate how early‐life conditions (across the “first” and “second” 1000 days) are associated with rural and urban children's nutritional status, we analyzed anthropometric data from Maya children in Yucatan, Mexico. We collected weig...

Objective: To develop sex- and gestational age specific reference percentiles and curves for birth weight and length for Yucatec neonates using data from birth registers of infants born during 2015-2019. Material and methods: Observational, descriptive, epidemiologic study in a 5-year period including every registered birth in the state of Yucat...

Background Socioeconomic factors influence diet quality during pregnancy. However, dearth of evidence about the influence on energy and macronutrients adequacy calls for research. Objective To analyze the association between socioeconomic factors and adequacy rates of energy and macronutrients intakes in pregnant women from Merida, Yucatan, Mexico...

This study analyzes the influence of grandmothers’ household residency on the presence of low height-for-age and excessive fat (FMI = fat mass [kg]/height [m2]), waist circumference, and sum of triceps and subscapular skinfolds in a sample of 247 6- to 8-year-old urban Maya children from Yucatan, Mexico. Between September 2011 and January 2014, we...

Objective To test the hypothesis that fetal growth, indexed by birth weight (BW), induce metabolic adjustments in the fetus that will be reflected in differences in body composition in a sample of 6‐to 8‐years old urban Maya children from Yucatan, Mexico. Methods We measured height (cm), weight (kg) and triceps skinfold (mm) in 260 children (boys:...

Background Adrenarche involves maturation of the hypothalamic‐pituitary‐adrenal axis and increased production of dehydroepiandrosterone and its sulfate ester, dehydroepiandrosterone‐sulfate (DHEA‐S). It occurs at ages 6 to 8 in industrialized populations, marking the transition from childhood to juvenility and cognitive development at middle childh...

Globalization is an economic force to bring about a closer integration of national economies. Globalization also has effects on human biology. Food globalization brings about Nutritional transition, the most common being a shift from a locally grown diet with minimally refined foods, to the modern diet of highly processed foods, high in saturated F...

This book adopts a human ecology approach to present an overview of the biological responses to social, political, economic, cultural and environmental changes that affected human populations in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, since the Classic Maya Period. Human bodies express social relations, and we can read these relations by analyzing biologica...

We critically analyze definitions of Growth stunting and low height-for-age, Height-for-age on the arbitrary cut-off points that classify people dichotomously as “Stunted” or “non-stunted.” We discuss how individuals may be included or excluded in one of such categories, depending on the Standard or references used, and list inherent Health implica...

Today a considerable proportion of Yucatecan Maya reside in urban areas, with the city of Merida being a site with a long history of settlement. The Maya bring with them a historical legacy of poverty and abusive treatment during the more than 500 years of European and then Mestizo domination. This chapter discusses, from a human ecology perspectiv...

Background: Overweight/obesity (OW/OB) coexists in mother-child dyads. However, a dearth of evidence on the factors associated with this phenomenon calls for research. Objective: To analyze the association of sociodemographic factors with OW/OB in a sample of 260 Maya mother-child dyads from Yucatan, Mexico. Methods: During 2011 to 2014, we me...

Objective: The aim of this study was to analyze the association between relative leg length (RLL) (leg length × 100/height) and adiposity in a sample of 6- to 8-year-old children of Maya ancestry from Motul and Merida, Mexico. Methods: This cross-sectional study included 260 children (128 girls) measured between 2011 and 2015. The RLL was used a...

Objectives The purpose of this study was to analyze the association between birth mode and fat mass index (FMI = fat mass [kg]/height [m]²), and z‐score values of waist circumference (WCZ) and sum of triceps and subscapular skinfolds (SumSkfZ) in a sample of 256 6‐ to 8‐year‐old urban Maya children from the cities of Merida and Motul in Yucatan, Me...

Human nutritional ecology encompasses the biocultural relationships between people and their food. From a biological perspective, food is central to life because of the essential nutrients it provides, which are needed for growth, repair, and maintenance of the body. From a medical perspective, food is central because of the consequences of diet an...

Comunicamos resultados centrales de un proyecto multidisciplinario que abordó la corporeidad humana como un producto social, histórico, inmerso en un campo de ejercicio del poder. Nuestros estudios de grupos mayas en Mérida, Yucatán, realizados en los últimos quince años, evidencian las consecuencias a largo plazo de las condiciones de vida en que...

Objectives: To analyze whether living conditions, experienced by mothers and adult daughters during their childhood, are associated with age at menarche (AAM) in daughters. Methods: From September, 2011, to January, 2014, AAM and childhood living conditions were collected from a sample of 246 dyads of Maya mothers (mean age = 59.60 years, SD = 8...

Immigration is a process that allows an individual to acquire capitals linked to attributes of education: knowledge, abilities, attitudes and values. Intrastate migration is a major phenomenon in Mexico that is dominated by women. In 2010, Yucatan was the state with the most internal movement. We applied a four-stage model to analyze migration amon...

INTRODUCCIÓN: en Mérida, Yucatán, México, la siesta es una costumbre arraigada que hace referencia al período dedicado a dormir después de almorzar.OBJETIVO: describir el hábito de la siesta y su asociación con el exceso de peso en los escolares de primaria.MATERIALES Y MÉTODOS: estudio transversal prolectivo desarrollado en 2012 en una muestra pro...

INTRODUCCIÓN: en Mérida, Yucatán, México, la siesta es una costumbre arraigada que hace referencia al período dedicado a dormir después de almorzar. OBJETIVO: describir el hábito de la siesta y su asociación con el exceso de peso en los escolares de primaria. MATERIALES Y MÉTODOS: estudio transversal prolectivo desarrollado en 2012 en una muestra...

Background: Height and body segments in children have differential pubertal growth characteristics. Lower leg length is a sensitive indicator of child's nutritional status. Objective: The purpose of this study was to estimate differential timing and tempo of height and knee height (KH) growth in 9- to 17-year-old boys (n = 475) and girls (n = 50...

Background. Obesity has negative impact on health and socialization. Previous studies have found that obese children have lower grades, but it is unclear a) if specific subject might affect their average grades b) if the results standardized tests and school grades are equivalent for obese and non-obese children in a community where pediatric obesi...

INTRODUCTION: In Merida, Yucatan, Mexico, the afternoon nap is a deep-rooted habit that makes reference to a period dedicated to sleep after lunch. OBJECTIVE: Of this observational study is to describe the habit of the afternoon nap and its association with overweight among school-aged children. METHODS: This is a section cross sectional prospectiv...

Presentación del II Congreso Internacional de Vectores (Hemíptera: Reduviidae: Triatominae) y del Trypanosoma cruzi. Simposio Internacional sobre la Enfermedad de Chagas

Background: Obesity has negative impact on health and socialization. Previous studies found that children with obesity have lower grades, but it is unclear: a) if specific subject might affect their grade point averages, b) if the results of standardized tests and school grades are the same for children with and without obesity in a community where...

Objective: To analyze the relationship between maternal height, offspring birth weight, and adiposity at 6-10 years of age in a sample of 197 mother-child dyads from Merida, Mexico. Materials and methods: During 2008-2009 and 2011-2013, measurements were taken of maternal height and weight; and height, waist circumference (WC), and skinfolds (tr...

European Journal of Clinical Nutrition is a high quality, peer-reviewed journal that covers all aspects of human nutrition.

The Maya people are descended from the indigenous inhabitants of southern Mexico, Guatemala and adjacent regions of Central America. In Guatemala, 50% of infants and children are stunted (very low height-for-age), and some rural Maya regions have >70% children stunted. A large, longitudinal, intergenerational database was created to (1) provide dee...

Early menarche (EM) (i.e., age at menarche [AAM] <12 years of age) is related to short height and higher body fatness. In a mixed-longitudinal study done in Merida, Yucatan, height, body mass index (BMI), and percentage of body fat (BF%) were recorded at a one-year interval among 258 postmenarcheal (EM = 94) girls. Anthropometric measurements were...

Waist circumference (WC) as an index of central obesity is related to body mass index (BMI) and percent body fat (PBF). Waist circumference data were analyzed to identify a WC cut-off for adult women with respect to BMI-based obesity (≥ 30 kg/m(2)) and PBF. Thesample was 138 women aged 22 to 41 years with Maya ancestry (based on surnames) in Merida...

Poster presented at the 2015 AAPA (American Association of Physical Anthropologists) meetings, St Louis, MO, USA (April 2015)

To analyze differences in knee height (KH) between adult Maya mothers and daughters in Merida City, Mexico, and determine if these differences are associated with their childhood socioeconomic conditions. From September 2011 to January 2014, we measured KH and collected data on childhood conditions (place of birth, type of drinking water, family si...

The voices of the co-researchers who participate in participatory action research (PAR) processes side by side with professional researchers (i.e. ‘acompanantes’) are essential for adding form, weight and depth to histories of PAR processes. Such voices can be powerful expressions of the many emotions involved in PAR, e.g. pride, shyness, happiness...

The Maya Project (mayaproject.org.uk) The Maya are the largest living group of Native Americans, with 6-7 million members dispersed across what is now Guatemala, Mexico, and Belize. During 2012, popular interest in the Maya increased largely as the result of a prophecy, falsely interpreted, claiming that cataclysmic events would occur as a conseque...

Objectives To test the hypothesis that living conditions experienced by maternal grandmothers (F1 generation) and mothers (F2 generation) during their childhood are related to height and leg length (LL: height − sitting height) of their 6-to-8 year old children (F3 generation).Methods From September 2011 to June 2012 we obtained height and LL, and...

This qualitative study reports the findings from 6 focus groups conducted at a clinic in Southern Mexico with caregivers of morbidly obese children. This study was developed with the purpose of gaining a further understanding of caregivers' perceived role in addressing their children's obesity within the family context and identifying topics that c...

A cross-sectional study was done in 2006-2007 of 458 children (218 boys and 240 girls) aged 4 to 6 years (range 4.00 to 6.99 years) in Merida, Mexico. Height (cm) and body weight (kg) were measured to estimate growth; body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) was calculated to evaluate nutritional status. Results showed significant sex difference with respect t...

Intake pattern of macronutrients (protein, lipid, carbohydrate) and socioeconomic status (SES) are major causes of high child and adolescent overweight and obesity prevalences in Mexico. An evaluation was done of the relationship between body mass index (BMI)-based nutritional status and body composition (BC), macronutrient intake rates (MIR) and S...

The co-existence of very short stature due to poor chronic environment in early life and obesity is becoming a public health concern in rapidly transitioning populations with high levels of poverty. Individuals who have very short stature seem to be at an increased risk of obesity in times of relative caloric abundance. Increasing evidence shows th...

Background: Increasing rates of overweight and obesity in adolescents are major concerns in many countries, including Mexico. Objectives: To study anthropometric and body composition characteristics (BCC) and their relations with socioeconomic status (SES), biological history and physical activity (PA) of school-going adolescent boys and girls i...

Globalization is, in part, an economic force to bring about a closer integration of national economies. Globalization is also a biological, social and ideological process of change. Globalization results in powerful multinational corporations imposing their products on new markets. Food globalization brings about nutritional transitions, the most c...

To test the hypothesis that leg length-relative-to-stature is a more sensitive indicator of nutrition and health than is total height (HT) or sitting height (SH) in a sample of 109 triads of urban Maya children (6.0-8.99 years), their mothers, and maternal grandmothers from Merida, Mexico. From September 2011 to June 2012, the following factors wer...

Identify the biological, social, and economic conditions influencing the knee height/stature index (KHSI) in growing individuals of Maya ancestry in the city of Merida, Yucatan, Mexico. The hypothesis was that KHSI values would be lower in subjects with two Maya surnames. This was tested by analyzing the effect of a series of environmental, biologi...

The Maya are the most populous and shortest in stature Native American ethnic group. The Maya provide us a good opportunity to study the dietetic characteristics of a group who experience nutritional dual burden (the combination of under and ovenutrition) at the individual, mother-child dyad and population level. The aim of this study is to describ...

Podium presentation. 38 Annual Meeting - Human Biology Association, Knoxville, TN (April 2013).

Summary Variation in height among young adults has been linked to the living conditions of different social groups. The aim of this study was to measure variation in the height and knee height of young adults by head of household employment level and family income. The sample comprised 180 individuals (90 girls) aged 16 and 17 years living in the c...

Background: Childhood stunting has been associated with an increased risk of obesity in adulthood, but the causes are unclear. This study hypothesizes that stunting significantly reduces both resting and activity energy expenditure. Aim: To assess and describe energy expenditure of low socio-economic Maya children and to determine whether stunti...

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of the nutritional dual-burden in the developing world. Nutritional dual-burden is defined as the coexistence of under-and-over nutrition in the same population/group, the same household/family, or the same person. In this paper we aim: a) to describe the different types of nutritional dual-burden, b) to identif...

Body mass index (BMI) is used frequently to estimate adiposity levels in children and adults. However, the applicability of BMI to populations with high levels of stunting has been questioned. Stunted people can have disproportionately short legs, which may increase BMI without increasing body fat because of the relatively larger trunk compared wit...

To understand age-sex variation of stature and upper arm length (UAL) and to estimate stature from UAL through prediction equations. A cross-sectional study was undertaken in 2006-2007 among 458 children (218 boys and 240 girls) aged 4.0 to 6.92 y of south Merida in Yucatan, Mexico. The results show significant age variation (p < 0.001) of stature...

Introduction and aims: Developing countries are currently facing a dual burden of chronic malnutrition and overweight/obesity. The biocultural determinants of this phenomenon are rooted in the combined effects of socioeconomic change, metabolic impairments, intergenerational effects and negative early-life outcomes. Energy expenditure levels also p...

Logistics of using new measurement devices are important to understand when developing protocols. This paper discusses the logistics of using Actiheart physical activity monitors on children in an urban, tropical environment in a developing country. Actiheart monitoring of 36 children aged 7-9 years old was undertaken for 7 days in the city of Méri...

The problem whether the pubertal spurt is a single developmental effort or series of changes with dominance of intensified increments was considered. The examinations took place in the tropical climate of Yucatan and included 49 boys and 47 girls aged 11-13 years and being of the Maya, Mestizo and Creole origin. The youths were attending two school...

In developing nations, obesity has increased dramatically in the last decade, but a high prevalence of stunting still coexists. The intergenerational influences hypothesis (IIH) is one explanation for this. We test the IIH regarding variation in maternal stature, mother's age at pregnancy, and infant birth weight in relation to risk for overweight...

Merida city in Yucatan, Mexico, has received rural-to-urban migration for decades, with most immigrants settling in the city's southern neighborhoods. Exposure of immigrants to new environmental and sociocultural conditions can generate biological responses, including changes in physical growth pattern at early age. We performed a study to identify...

The results of an analysis of the viewpoints of Celestún community members regarding the Ría Celestún Biosphere Reserve, Mexico, are used as the basis for recommendation to improve the community/natural protected area (NPA) relationship. Participant observation was used to record the opinions of 80 people (8–83years of age) between April and August...

In this chapter we report on and discuss a 14-year-long, participatory research (PR) project. This process was implemented in The Port, a small coastal village in Yucatan, Mexico, the 586 inhabitants of which share a strong Mayan cultural ancestry. Our main goal is to 36 Changing the Culture of Dependency to Allow for Successful Outcomes in Partici...

Nutritional transition, urbanization, and physical inactivity are primary factors responsible for the worldwide epidemic of overweight/obesity (OW/OB). However, these factors fail to explain the epidemic of OW/OB in developing countries and in recent-migrants to developed countries. Among these, OW/OB is associated with short/stunted stature and co...

A report is made of the accomplishments and difficulties encountered during an applied human ecology project carried out in a fragile coastal wetland on the coast of Yucatan, Mexico. The agents included a Scientific Research Team (SRT), the Palafitte Group (PG), comprised of facilitators, and the community as a whole. Information was culled from 96...

The main aim of this work concerns the answer a question whether the general regularity of seasonal differences in changes of height, weight, and body components during ontogeny in tropics exist. If so, whether this phenomenon depends on cyclic changes in nature or this rather is an adjustment to local conditions and mode of life. To answer this qu...

En 1990 se inició un programa de investigaciones en ecología humana en un municipio de la antigua zona henequenera de Yucatán (Ortega and Dickinson 1991) (Dickinson and Ortega 1994), entre cuyos objetivos se encuentra el de vincular a un grupo de investigación científica con las comunidades del municipio, para identificar y resolver problemas relev...

This paper emphasizes the role of Participatory Research (PR) in the socialization and resocialization processes, in which individuals' behavior towards the environment is acquired. We studied PR in the childhood socialization process by teaching it in an elementary school in a rural community in Yucatan, Mexico. An experimental (E) group; and a co...

Participatory research (PR) methodology strengthens the community's capability to identify, rank and solve its main problems, to negotiate with outside agents such as official and private agencies, and to change local behavioral patterns that contribute to impoverishing human health and well-being. Here we report results of the application of PR me...

The paper is focused on the seasonal pattern of birth and occurrence of menarche in different populations. The material collected in 1988/89 consists of 522 girls and their 249 mothers from schools of Merida, and of 135 girls and their 66 mothers from Progreso (Yucatan, Mexico). Occurrence of a biorhythm due to which girls matured in the month of t...

In this paper, we report the results of the application of principal component analysis (PCA) in a study of the human ecology of rural-to-urban migrantion in Yucatan, Mexico. Socioeconomic, reproductive and anthropometric data from 216 women 32 years of age or older, were obtained in 1989-1990. Seventeen socioeconomic, demographic and environmental...

9936 families were analyzed from Bulgaria, Japan, Korea, Mexico, and Poland. A factor analysis revealed four factors: culture (F1), income (F2), genetics (F3), and family and apartment size (F4). Family types we coded as 1 if below the median and 2 if above the median. The most frequent types were represented by 1122, 2221, and 2211 (frequency 8.7-...

A total of 522 girls and their families from low and middle social strate were examined in the northern part of Merida (Yucatan) during 1988 and 1989. Marital radius in the parental generation was relatively long (146 km), and it was six times longer for non-Maya and mixed couples than Maya. Living and housing conditions were similar for both Maya...

'In this paper data on height, weight, body mass index, and 4 subcutaneous fatfolds and health data from 216 Yucatecan women older tha 30 years of age, by place of residence and migrant status, and by socioeconomic statues, are reported. The high proportion of overweight, hypertension and diabetes mellitus, suggests that obesity is an important Pub...

The objective of this paper is to analyze changes in the biological condition of the inhabitants of Jastarnia (Hel Peninsula), who were examined three times during 1963-87. A total of 1791 persons of both sexes, aged from 3 to 80 years were under study. A total of 20 somatic and physiological traits were considered. According to the data of the Cen...

1 Resumen Uno de los usos básicos que hacemos del ambiente es el de construir albergues para refugiarnos, para lo cual empleamos diversos materiales y recursos naturales y ocupamos áreas que, generalmente, estaban cubiertas por algún tipo de vegetación y pertenecían, por tanto, a algún ecosistema. En ocasiones, los asentamientos humanos se construy...

Introduccion E 1 estado de Ylicatfin, con una superficie de 39 340 km2, y 1 363 540 habitantes (INEGI, 1990), est6 ubicado en la penin-sula del mismo nombre. Con 106 municipios, 77.2 por ciento de su poblaci6n es urbana y se ubica en 23 de ellos, donde Mkrida, capital del estado absorbe 40.9 por ciento de la poblacion estatal (INEGT, 1990). En el p...