Similarities Between American Samoa And Western Samoa

American Samoa and Western Samoa are two different islands, both within the Samoan Archipelago. It is crucial to state that they are not the same, as they will both be talked about in this paper, both containing differences and similarities as well. As learned in lecture and several different sources, the Samoan population is known for their massive body size. It is a well debated issue on reasons for their size, but these can be explained when talking about obesity, one of the biggest issues Samoans must deal with. Obesity is one of many consequences to their largeness and they can be explained by the multiple effects of obesity in Samoa: socioeconomic and political factors, cultural and biological. Each will be discussed, but more importantly

The Samoan Archipelago contains nine islands located in the South Pacific, in between Hawaii and Australia (Cassel, 2010). The entirety of the archipelago is comprised of two divisions, the American Samoa and Western Samoa, but they are both have the same ethnicities, culture, beliefs, etc. According to the archaeological evidence by Weisler and Kirch (1996), Samoans migrated from the East Indies and the Malay Peninsula, and arrived at the Samoan island chain at around 3300 Before Present Era (BPE). Other evidence by Friedlaender et al. (2008) states that there are two signs of population relationships in the past: “The Express Train to Polynesia” model and “The Slow Boat to Polynesia”. The Express Train to Polynesia demonstrates the movement of ancestors from the area of Taiwan to the Central Pacific. Scientists supported this with evidence of a “younger mtDNA haplotype (B4a1a1) is assumed to have been closely linked to the development and expansion of Polynesian populations.” (Friedlaender

Samoans “bodies have not caught up yet” according to Manu who was a Samoan Researcher. He said that their bodies were “maladapted to the current environment” (McCullough, 2015) and that this change resulted from working in agriculture to working in offices. Change in the environment is largely the cause of migration. The influence of migration may affect blood pressure levels and hypertension rates, which related back to heart disease and such diseases relating to weight gain (McGarvey et al., 1979). In addition to the cultural factors of migration in weight gain, researchers found evidence of biological factors that play a big role in the size of Samoans. Neel (1962) argued that the existence of diabetes caused by modernization is associated with genetic factors. He hypothesized that in the past, the Samoans have “favored storage of calories in the form of adipose tissue in response to natural selection during food shortages” (McCullough, 2015). He first developed this idea in 1962 called “the thrifty-gene hypothesis”, is has helped people over the years to understand obesity and chronic diseases in the Samoan Islands (Gershater & McGarvey, 1995; Zimmet et al. 1998; Neel, 1962). Samoans who have the “thriftiness” or “metabolic efficiency” could have survived longer, been healthier and had more offspring, which is the basis of natural selection. The changes in lifestyle among the islanders due