Fat, Poor & Sick

James Fallow at the Atlantic has been running an entire series on obesity & class in the US. It contains observations and maps tying Obesity with voting patterns and income.

More sloppy stats. The study Mr. Engber cites is full of the inevitable causality holes.

This post does suggest an interesting causal relationship, though. Some people's desire to be relevant and helpful seems to cause them to give an over-credulous reading to statistical studies like this, and then to conclude that a cascade of benefits will result if they start telling other people what to eat.

Fat, sick and poor is no way to go through life son....

I'm not sure if it's a projection of the play-pen lefty "America is fat, gluttons with food as well as energy and vehicles and everything else" PC stuff, or if it's just a social-engineering-related PC decision to subject overweight people to the same kind of abuse formerly reserved for white males and Southern whites, but it's no more respectable any more than it is logical or sensible.

No, we don't want parent-like pee-cee government telling us what we "should" weigh, what we "should" ingest (and how much, etc.), what we "should" wear, or "should" say, or think...

I thought the article itself was pretty well-written, non-judgmental, while doing some decent analysis on the statistics. I would like to have seen some possible causes that women who are fat tend to be less wealthy, while the opposite is true for men.

The biggest problem I saw with the entire thing was taking a reasonably well-written article and slapping this offensive eye-roller of a headline on it: Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Big Fat Asses.

I never thought of obesity that way, but now that I think about it, it is true that Obesity can cause lots of health problems which can lead to very high medical bills, and then lead to poverty. However, no one should have to go broke due to health problems, and it highlights what's wrong with our health care system here in America.

-Nikki-

"Obesity" has become the latest buzz-word of a PC subculture. That and "the obesity crisis" [sic].

A clever cynic might respond: In the real world, so now we know some of you are likely to face job and other forms of discrimination, so you should stop being black -- oops, did you say "fat," instead?

Roro, the biggest problem is the underlying stats don't grapple with the obvious explanation: some people invest in themselves more than others do, and that shows up in how well they eat, how hard they study in school, what sort of job they get, and so on.

Instead, the study I linked tried to show causality by introducing a delay factor--correlating people's weight now to their incomes 7 years ago. But it's still just a correlation. The young people in their study (they don't say how young) were probably going to gain weight like 20-somethings do. The ones inclined to take better care of themselves would probably gain less.

Doing a good job of a study like this would be incredibly hard, because there are a million reasons why any of us does anything. Psychologists trying to piece together genuine causes and effects in people's behavior have to do it one person at a time, and their answers tend to be untidy, often tracing back to random events in childhood.

I find the whole premise of posts like this distasteful, that we should undertake to change the outcomes our neighbors have achieved in personal matters like their job or their weight should we deem them unsatisfactory.

Shockingly, I agree with you for the most part, DLS, although I most certainly wouldn't call it "PC" (in fact, much the opposite) to blame the world's problems on obese people. Not to mention that what very few people are willing to do is look at why there is a corrolation between poverty and obesity. Farm subsidies for corn mean it's cheaper to buy soda than juice. No full grocery stores in poor urban neighborhoods means little access to things like fresh produce for those who live in those communities. The lack of public recreation space in urban communities means that most people have to go to the gym to get excersize; a $50/month gym membership is certainly a luxury that the working poor is unlikely to splurge on. A person working 2 jobs is unlikely to have the time to get regular workouts or cook nutritious meals. After all that, fat women tend to make less money, even when controlled for education. And the list goes on...

"I most certainly wouldn't call it 'PC' (in fact, much the opposite) to blame the world's problems on obese people."

The PC clique has adopted(!) "obesity" and turned it into a handy means of attacking some people and pursuing tax policy and social engineering, and as an excuse for leftist "food policy" [scowl]

"Farm subsidies for corn [...]"

I'll sidestep the PC and extremist issues related to this and other matters (sugar-sweetened beverages as well as bottled water as objects of political wrath; poor economies and high crime that discourage or lead to closures of stores selling food as well as other items where it doesn't pay, etc.) and just note here something related:

Obama chose Vilsack as his Ag secretary, and what now? Some states want higher ethanol content in fuels, which means more corn-based ethanol.

[Possible rise from 10 per cent to 15 per cent]


http://www.detnews.com/article/20090928/AUTO01/...

http://www.detnews.com/article/20090929/OPINION...

http://www.hoosieragtoday.com/wire/news/00450_l...

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/editorials/etha...

Dr. J, I didn't see and causality conclusions in the piece, merely an acknowledgment of corrolation. There was speculation as to the reasons the different stats might be corrolated, but it was clearly stated as "perhaps" or "maybe"; in fact, the entire article could be summed up as "these things are corrolated, but we don't know if there's a causal relationship or if there are outside causes for the corrolation; here are some possibilities".

I find that you coming out saying that there is an "obvious" explanation for the corrolation to be introducing a cause that is merely speculative without acknowledgement that speculation is all that it is. It seems that your "obvious" conclusion is that some people work hard (or are inherently better in some way) and therefore those people are healthy, wealthy, and thin. There are certainly instances where this might be the case, but it certainly can't explain all the data. For example, how does this mesh with the fact that women's size and wealth are corrolated inversely, while the opposite is true for men? If it's merely a matter of people working hard or being better in some way and therefore working out and eating well and doing well at their higher-paid jobs, why do men earn wealth while gaining weight while women earn wealth while losing it?

Roro, if we're talking about the same paper, it's not agnostic on causality. It makes a bunch of comments about "the labor market impact of obesity" and posits causal mechanisms.

I'm not saying there's a single obvious explanation, I merely raised one plausible one that's consistent with people I know, that doesn't evoke Toledo scales in the payroll department, and which the paper didn't debunk. I'm not proposing it's a complete explanation for all people. Like I say, people are complex products of their genes, cultures, experiences, and desires, so a one-size-fits-all explanation is doomed from the start.

But hey, if you really think you can get a raise by eating more (or less), knock yourself out.

"It makes a bunch of comments about "the labor market impact of obesity" and posits causal mechanisms."

It posits all of these causal mechanisms as possibilities, not as facts, so I'm not sure what you're getting at.

"But hey, if you really think you can get a raise by eating more (or less), knock yourself out."

This is quite an interesting statement. It's pretty obvious that women who fit the culturally acceptable beauty standards do better in the workplace, kind of like being tall for men. I would doubt you disagree that being thin is one of the overriding socially acceptable beauty standards, at least in this country. Of course, your own statement of causation does imply that people are fat because they don't work as hard as thin people, and this can be (and often is) interpreted to mean that fat people are lazy. If a boss who has internalized the common fat = lazy connection, it's not hard to see why they might hire or promote a thin person over a fat person, even if that connection isn't conscious.

roro80 - Just as you were surprised to find yourself much in agreement with DLS, you may be surprised to learn that I agree with you about the fat=lazy mantra. Of course, I had the benefit of being dressed down by a commenter here once for my flip (and disrespectful) attitude about obesity. You were right; I was wrong.

Roro, no doubt some people have better-paying jobs because they're more attractive, others because they're determined or well-connected or lucky or because of all sorts of choices they made. The study didn't control for those variables.

You're right, roro.

Being thin is usually helps in succeeding in the workplace.
But it's not simply superficial beauty that weighs in on that. Thin is typically (and sometimes wrongfully) associated with health and strength. And people want strong people in the workplace. That's a sociological mechanism, I'm afraid.

But here's a twist on the original article statement that rings very true.

If being fat makes you poor, and being poor makes you sick, consider this:

Being poor makes you fat.

Why?
Because the foods you must buy on a small budget are those chalk-full of crap, fillers, and carbs.
The "healthy" foods are more expensive. My wife and I noticed that when we were poor and trying to raise our children with healthy eating habits. We nearly couldn't do it.

Just a thought.

Wow, tidbits, that's a nice thing to wake up to in the morning!

But Dr J, consider the scenario where you have two equally qualified candidates as far as being determined or skilled or even well-connected. One is a trim and traditionally attractive woman, and one is chubbier and wears "comfortable shoes". We both know that the hawt chick gets the job, right? And of course every situation is different and will have different confounding factors, but when it comes down to it, there is unearned priviledge in being thin and beautiful.

"Being poor makes you fat".

Oh, absolutely! I think I touched on that in my comment (way up there) in response to DLS. My folks were in the same situation you were when my sis and I were growing up; luckily my dad loved to garden, so the cheapest food out there came from the garden and the little orchard. In addition to price, there's also an access issue: I live in a very affluent neighborhood (in a shoebox sized apartment, but anyway...) and I can walk to 3 grocery stores, a weekly farmer's market, and (count 'em) 9 gyms within a 3 block radius from my home. There are poor, primarily black and latino neighborhoods in this same city that don't even have *one* full-sized grocery store within any sort of walking distance.

There is unearned priviledge in being thin and beautiful.

There are certainly privileges, whether they're unearned is a matter of speculation. Personally I think part of attractiveness is the illusion of effortlessness. You see the result, you don't see the hours in the gym or the fastidious lifestyle.

That said, many privileges are indeed unearned, because life is not fair. Trying to make it fair is a fool's errand on which I will not spend your money. I hope you'll return the favor.

"Trying to make it fair is a fool's errand on which I will not be attempting to spend your money. I hope you'll return the favor."

Not sure what you mean about spending money, but I certainly disagree that trying to stamp out institutional bias is a "fool's errand". In fact, I think it's one of the most important activities toward which I put my time.

What is institutional bias?

Wow...that's a huge, huge question. I'm going to go with my initial thought that you're asking in good faith, and see if I can take a stab at it.

In essence, the idea of institutional bias is that our culture and the people in it favor certain inherent traits over others, and therefore those who possess those traits tend to do better in all aspects of life, to the detriment of those who do not. These traits set up a webbed heirarchy of privilege. These traits include things like (in no particular order): whiteness, maleness, able-bodiedness, wealth, straightness, cisgenderdness, thinness, beauty, marital status, Christianity, age, etc. The way that these factors combine form what's often called the "kyriarchy", which is a fancy way of saying that the way someone experiences one institutional bias is different than the way others do, depending on what other confounding factors are involved. For example: the way that white women experience sexism is different than the way black women experience sexism, and likewise they way black men experience racism is different than the way black women experience racism. It's not that whiteness is more important than maleness or vice versa, it's that they're different. Particularly those who fall at the top of the kyriarchy have a hard time accepting that they benefit from the structure, and likewise, those who face one institutional bias but not others have a hard time accepting accepting that while they don't benefit from certain aspects, they do benefit from others. One quick example of this: the historical and current marginalization of people of color within the gay community. This difficulty in accepting that the situation into which we were born has a great deal to do with the success we have in life is a problem because those higher on the kyriarchy by definition have more power to change things and eliminate biases than those who are lower. This is why activists against racism need white allies, feminists need male allies, trans people need cis allies, disabled people need able-bodied allies, etc. It makes progress on civil rights and the elimination of institutional bias a difficult job, requiring lots of chipping away.

I hope all of that made sense. I don't know if you're going to like or be accepting of the idea, but maybe it will give you something to think about.

Thanks, Roro. The way I've heard that described before is in terms of a pecking order. The term comes from chickens, but some sort of hierarchy of individuals is common to many social species. Humans form pecking orders of individuals in a group as well as pecking orders of groups among each other. This book I read traces the pecking order all the way up from microbiology to foreign policy and uses it to offer, among other things, a secular definition of "evil." I found it a fascinating read.

So where I'll disagree with you is that the kyriarchy is something we should or can do away with. It seems to be so fundamental to species like ours that I have to think it's here for a reason and isn't going anywhere.

I also think fretting over it clouds what are actually very simple issues and gets in the way of solving them. People get fat because they eat more than they burn off. If they want to be thinner, they have to eat less and/or exercise more. That's all there is to it. If you convince them their problem is really their place in the kyriarchy, you're turning a problem they can solve on their own into a problem that no one can solve.

I guess that there is a certain "pecking order" to the whole thing in some deliberate cases, but that term implies that those at the top are consciously picking off or holding down those below for their personal gain or for the gain of their group. I find this rarely to be the case. It's fairly uncommon (at least in today's United States) that rich people consciously want poor people to stay poor, or that white people consciously hire white people over black people because they want to keep the office all white. The kyriarchy generally acts in more subtle ways.

"So where I'll disagree with you is that the kyriarchy is something we should or can do away with."

You're probably right on this, but hell if I'm not going to try. Besides, while it's true that it probably won't ever go away completely, we see the evidence of its crumbling every day. 50 years ago, the difference between white people and black people in the system was so much larger than it is now; same with women. LGBTQ folks have made huge strides just in the past 10 years. The ways to chip away can come in the large forms of public policy, but they can also come in the small forms of personal exposure and acceptance. Big chips, little chips, it's all good.

'It seems to be so fundamental to species like ours that I have to think it's here for a reason.."

While it most certainly is there for a reason, I absolutely reject the idea that it's "fundamental to the species". Why would that be the case? Any evidence at all? With that in mind, I also vehemently reject that the reason it's there is worth preserving.

"I also think fretting over it clouds what are actually very simple issues and gets in the way of solving them."

An argument can be made for this on the issue of obesity (I don't think that argument holds much water, but it can be made), but what about anything else on that list? How do solve the "problem" of blackness? Or femaleness? Etc.

"If you convince them their problem is really their place in the kyriarchy"

Ok, so here's the issue with this argument: fat acceptance is not, on any larger scale, associated with discrimination and issues of the kyriarchy. Hell, it's tough to convince many people that race is! So, clearly, vanishinly few fat people are convinced that their problem is the kyriarchy, and very few non-fat people are convinced of this either, and instead there's internalized self-hatred and disgust on the part of the fat people, and externalized disgust and prejudice and blame against fat people by the non-fat people. If it's just a problem that a person will solve themselves given enough shame and public smacking-down, why isn't the problem solved? Clearly, what we're doing isn't working, and amping up the shame/blame game is going to make the problem worse, not better. Not to mention, of course, that while being fat often has health implications, it really doesn't have any implications about how good a worker the person will be, or what types of skills zie will have, or how good a person zie is, or how clean, or how strong, etc etc. The point is: regardless of the possibility of most fat people to change their fatness, what good is it for our culture to ascribe to all fat people other, unrelated traits (lazy, dirty, ugly), and use those incorrect assumptions to justify bias against that person? *That* is where the kyriarchy comes in.

I absolutely reject the idea that it's "fundamental to the species". Why would that be the case?

To manage conflict over scarce resources. If chickens fought constantly over every morsel of food, they'd wear themselves out and be eaten by wolves. Instead, they fight once in a while over the pecking order but most of the time abide by it, therefore they spend less energy fighting internally, and the group lives longer.

Why isn't the problem solved? Clearly, what we're doing isn't working.

What problem, exactly? That there are fat people? That being fat has negative consequences? That people make decisions on assumptions that are not always correct?

DrJ -- I don't want to put words in your mouth, so let me make sure I'm getting your point correct: your contention is that there are evolutionary reasons why the "pecking order" developed, and that would mean that any attempt to correct that pecking order for modern circumstances will have negative consequences. Is that correct? If not, by all means correct my understanding of your point. If so, that opens a whole 'nuther can of worms.

Let's just say that modern civilization can't really work if we assume that all of the evolutionary forces behind human development are still held as valid and valuable. If the only important rule is that an individual passes on hir genes while keeping others from doing so (one of the fundamental tenets of evolution in a resource-limited enviornment), rape or sleeping with your neighbor's wife without him knowing would be seen as positives, women should always be pregnant, and people with even the most minor of disabilities would be unable to reproduce. For example, 10,000 years ago, I wouldn't have been seen as a good reproductive mate because I can't see a darn thing without vision correction, and would have been unable to find food to feed my kids. Now? That's not at all a factor. With respect to the current discussion, there were probably pretty good evolutionary reasons for things like racism -- meeting someone who looks very much unlike you and your family/tribe/group would have meant extreme danger. Now, in a time where travelling or communicating across the globe is extremely easy, that evolutionary force is no longer valid.

"What problem, exactly? That there are fat people?"

Yes, that's the "relatively simple problem" that you mentioned, and the overall theme of the original post, so I was referring to that example. Sorry if that was unclear. My point was that shaming people for being fat isn't working, and it's keeping fat people who are otherwise perfectly capable of anything they'd want to do from success at those things. It is ultimately unfavorable for society as a whole to keep people from being as productive and successful as they are capable of just because of something as inconsequential and unrelated to ability as being fat (or Mexican, or in a wheel chair, or trans, or whatever). A fat person is unlikely to have that productivity and success in representing the US in a marathon, just like someone wheelchair-bound will unlikely be a successful construction worker, but there's no reason to discriminate against them in areas where their size/disability has no bearing.

I'm not quite saying mother nature should never be challenged. But I am saying many of these things you dislike seem pretty fundamental to human nature. Successes at changing them are apt to be limited, invasive and expensive. In the context of public policy discussions, that quickly becomes a question of whose freedom will be trampled and whose pocketbook drained in the effort.

Don't mean to interrupt this fascinating discussion,and it is fascinating. A thought occurs though. Evolution is not a static state. I think of that in relation to the assertion that the pecking order is "there for a reason" and isn't going away. That strikes me as assuming that evolution has reached its end point, an assumption I'm not comfortable with.

Evolution is a response to a "demand for change". Species who do not respond to a "demand for change", say climatic or predation related, will likely suffer dimunition in power, population, ultimately extinction. Social evolution is, my opinion, the same. Stasis is a formula for dimunition, perhaps extinction in the face of demand for change, and demand for change is the force by which healthy evolution is driven.

Feudalism did not give way without demand for change in the social environment. The same for monarchism giving way, for women's suffrage, for civil rights. And, all of those are still evolving (yes even feudalism...consider our treatment of undocumented workers). Evolutionary changes are constant and constantly the result of "demands for change". We now see gay rights as a demand for change; perhaps obesity is next, or PETA's push for the rights of all sensient creatures. We do not know where evolution, physical or social, will take us, but we do know that demands for change, whether environmental or social, will result in adaptation and that adaptation will continue.

It's hard to discuss change in the abstract, but gays' dramatic rise in status over the past few decades is a good topic. IMHO it's a classic example of a power grab within the pecking order, when a group lower down makes a play for a higher station. Gays have staged a successful coup, dethroning the traditionalists and their rules about what relationships polite society will recognize.

This is not a situation where gays have been given their equal due, and everyone has won. Gays have won, and traditionalists have lost. You can see their acute sense of loss in their reactions to gay marriage. They're horrified at the harm gay marriage will cause, though they spout nonsense when they try to identify what specifically is being harmed. The harm is nevertheless real, and it's to their own status in the pecking order.

The pecking order itself remains alive and well. If as Roro suggests we're seeing it at again in the case of blacks within the gay community, that's no surprise at all.

Dr J -

Sorry to be so late in my reply, but I am dealing with a very sick child. I observe that this discussion, which I think is very meaningful, is dropping near the demarcation point on the TMV site...about to go off site. May I suggest that we (you, roro and I) pick up at the post about politically incorrect toys...it is not heavily populated with comments.

You make an excellent point about winners and losers, but I would very much like to discuss a much more threatening (?) depending on your point of view, issue. In my view, the real change factor, one likely to transform, for good or bad, American social evolution is about to hit. I refer to the statistical projections, largely undisputed, that the nation will be majority non-white in the next 30 years and how the pressure of the new majority juxtaposed against the then white minority seeking to hold power in the face of that pressure will impact the evolutionary equation.

Will you join me at the un-PC toys post?

roro80 -

Because we are running near the bottom of the TMV site...about to be pushed off the page...I have suggested to Dr J that we rejoin this discussion at the post on un-PC toys farther up the site. Will you join us? Perhaps tomorrow when you rise for a new day?

Hey tidbits --
Hubby and I are moving this weekend, so I'm not sure I'll get back to the thread tomorrow. I do find the subject fascinating, and if I have a moment, I'll totally see if I can spend a while reading and responding.

I also wanted you to know that you kind of made my day today. Changing someone's mind on something doesn't happen all that often on this blog. It's not that you said "you were right and I was wrong" (although that feels pretty great every once in a while), it's that figuring out that maybe we're wrong in prejudging people makes us treat our fellow human beings with more respect. That's always a win for everyone.

Also, I hope your sick little one is feeling better soon!

Thank you for your kind thoughts.

tidbits

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roro -

Thank you. Just to be clear I want you to understand that you did not so
much "change my mind" as you made me realize the my "mind" did not comport
with my actions. While I had worked on one of the first obesity
discrimination lawsuits in the country, my personal attitude remained glib
and disrespectful. You helped me reconcile what I believed intelllectually
and what I expressed, thinking I was being funny (I wasn't).

There is an additional aspect I want you to know about. After your, very
appropriate, calling me out, I removed the most offensive of my comments
from the thread (though not all) and contacted dr. e off site to seek her
advice on how to address this. She was very helpful and deserves much more
credit than I. Like you, she has dealt wih these issues personally and
she was very kind in explaining the impact of my disrespectful attitude on
others. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for her to
treat me kindly after the things I said.

I owe a great deal to you and to dr. e for helping me come to the
realization that I needed to reconcile my beliefs with my actions. I have
thanked dr. e long ago. Now I thank you.

Best to you and your "hubby" in your new home. Our daughter is recovering
and should be well after a scary couple of days.

g. c.

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