By Maanvi Singh, NPR
"In speaking with community members, we also realized that for them, the biggest concern was obesity," says Vangay. "Because they had observed in themselves and their relatives and friends that when they moved to the U.S., they gained a lot of weight. And in some cases, they hadn't really changed too much about their diet."
This new study is a good first step in solving that mystery, says Maria Gloria Dominguez-Bello, a microbiologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey who wasn't involved in the research.
"I strongly believe this whole topic needs to be studied more rigorously, in more immigrant groups and people all over the world," she says. "Because one thing is clear: Human populations are migrating, and they are increasingly Westernizing. We need to know how those changes are going to affect our health."
Further research could also reveal what immigrants—and all Americans—who are struggling with obesity can do to improve their health. In the future, perhaps researchers may be able to develop probiotics that immigrants could take to compensate for microbes they've lost, Dominguez-Bello suggests.