ABSTRACT
A full understanding of body composition and its relationship to health must ultimately come from an understanding of humans as biocultural beings: as products of the interrelationships among biological and sociocultural factors. Using data on adiposity, glucose tolerance, the catecholamines or “stress hormones,” and educational attainment (as an index for sociocultural factors), this paper explores a set of such interrelationships in a sample of Japanese-American men. An hypothesis is then proposed that sociocultural factors and associated catecholamine secretory responses help regulate body fat distribution, which has implications for health, as seen here in glucose tolerance.
