Obesity Update – 2009/10/6
30% of all Southern blacks are obese: For every 100 obese whites in the South there are 151 obese blacks.
The odds that overweight, middle-aged women will live to age 70 can be as low as 20%: Each 2.2 pound gain since age 18 lowers the probability by 5%.
I am sure there are many reasons for weight disparities, but the idea that one of the authors of your first link puts forward is that healthy foods are unreachable by poorer groups.
This I can’t accept as a reason. While shopping at the local organic market might be out of reach, it is for me, actual healthy staples are not.
These obesity updates tend to be downers. I think I’ll go get a krispy kreme donut.
Perhaps obesity isn’t as bad as we think.
Our new surgeon general, Dr. Regina Benjamin, is functionally obese. She has been endorsed by the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance and may prove (once and for all) that you can lead the public health efforts in the U.S. and be obese at the same time.
Stunkard and Sobal (1989) conclude there is an inverse relationship between socioeconomic status and body size. Thus, Mississippi’s black population is likely poorer than the white population and suffers higher rates of obesity.
In Daniel Engber’s article in Slate (http://www.slate.com/id/2229523/), he asks whether poverty makes people obese, or is it the other way around? According to Engber, “sickness, poverty, and obesity are spun together in a dense web of reciprocal causality. Anyone who’s fat is more likely to be poor and sick. Anyone who’s poor is more likely to be fat and sick. And anyone who’s sick is more likely to be poor and fat.” Engber also explores another possibility: that poor people have an incentive to trade health for happiness. He says “since they don’t have as much money to spend on happiness, they ‘spend’ their health instead. He argues this because…”pleasures of smoking and eating, for example, are easy on the wallet and hard on the body.”
Bret, how about two Krispy Kreme donuts.