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Xolver t1_j4pgu9g wrote

Reply to comment by _PM_ME_YOUR_FORESKIN in New study shows: Black Adults Experienced Early Signs of Brain Aging Faster Than Other Ethnic Minority Groups by PaulHasselbaink

Unless you mean ALL culture is institutionalized racism - then no.

For example, can you really blame racism for people's eating habits? Is "the man" forcing anyone to eat less healthy? Because that, in part, explains the brain aging.

Before you say yes - do keep in mind there are cultures all around the world with similar levels of wealth and dissimilar levels of obesity. It does not make sense (without really, really good proof) to think that specifically in America obesity in the black population is caused by racism, while in other cultures and countries it's just "naturally" the way things are.

Edit: many responses, I don't see even one that tackles institutional racism equalling obesity as a direct cause. Especially considering other poor groups don't fare as badly in the obesity department. Guys, gals, remember what sub we're on. If you want to make a claim that something is causing something else, the burden of proof is on you, not on the person asking whether a certain claim is right or not.

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2017hayden t1_j4prf8l wrote

I mean the black population in the US is disproportionately poor (which is undeniably linked to systemic racism). Poor individuals typically eat junk food most of the time because it’s fast and easy to make and in many cases significantly cheaper than healthier options. So yes I mean you can somewhat link eating habits to racism in this case. Is it the whole story no, is it a factor absolutely.

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skasticks t1_j4pxpns wrote

Also poor areas are much more likely to be "food deserts," meaning you can't get good healthy food if you don't have transportation, time, money, or any combo of those three.

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Psychological_Pear23 t1_j4qc30g wrote

True, in some poor neighbourhoods you need to take 2 buses to get to a store where they sell whole foods, the neighboorhood store only sells junkfood. In the US i mean.

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ImmuneHack t1_j4q3bka wrote

Neither a high educational attainment nor a high income reduces the likelihood of obesity among blacks.

It's absurd to think that a low income US Asian is more likely to be obese than a high income US black person.

Ergo, poverty is not the driver of the high rates of obesity among blacks.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40615-019-00663-z

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2017hayden t1_j4q8kx3 wrote

Once poor eating habits are established it can be very difficult to change them. Ergo if you grow up eating largely junk food you’ll probably continue to make poor nutritional choices even if you have the means to do better than that. You’re jumping to conclusions off of a flawed premise.

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Hearing_Deaf t1_j4rg251 wrote

So are you. You are literally claiming that bad food habits cannot be changed, just because it was started in childhood. In my humble opinion, it's extremely racist to claim blacks don't have the willpower to break bad eating habits, no matter their education and wealth.

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anubiz96 t1_j4sd2k9 wrote

Its southern food culture it gets passed down. Look at what makes up southern American cuisine and soul food. To a point it is a result of racism as the food preferences and cooking habits are in no small part influenced by waht slaves were able to obtain for food.

I imagine you might see higher obesity rates ong multigenerational southern whites too due to the shared food culture.

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Hearing_Deaf t1_j4sl831 wrote

So? They use more fried food. The french put so much butter on everything it's not even funny. A croissant is litterrally 1:1 dough and butter. The italians and olive oil. Canadians with poutine and mapple syrup. Every culture has some good and some bad elements to it.

Plus you do not have to cook the same 3 things for the rest of your life, no matter where you are from. The world is big, it's a choice to eat only bad or fast food. It can still be your culture, but restricting yourself to a certain diet is a choice, not an obligation.

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anubiz96 t1_j4svzr1 wrote

Not saying its an obligation. But people more often than not peoole adhere closely to their culture. To a point we are all subject to our environmentand cultures. If it was very easy obesity wouldn't be on the rise in general around the world. Our bodies have hormonal responses to salt sugar and fat.

This is a really complicated topic. I would recommend if it really interets you that you do some in depth study on the history of slavery in the Untied states and the fall out after the civil war. The discrimination and the opression that followed officially well into the 1960s. There's a greater lacknof understanding of nutrition and access to healthy foods among poor people in general and black people in the United States have been disproportionately poor.

As well as how current food trends developed in the Untied States.

Its very complicated we all have free will, however most humans conform to their environment and culture.

Theres no one simple answer. There are many factors some to do with individual choice and also outside forces.

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2017hayden t1_j4t96ep wrote

I never claimed “blacks don’t have the willpower to break bad eating habits” I claimed that bad habits when started at a young age are difficult for anyone to break. That’s been studied and confirmed. You’re trying awfully hard to twist a specific narrative out of my words.

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anubiz96 t1_j4scpgz wrote

People are missing geography black people were largely enslaved in the southand lived for generations after in the south. Look at southern cuisine. The fact thet so much of traditional black american foods are based around the best you can with poor quality food available to slaves. There's a lot of fat, and frying etc. Cooking techniques used to make poorer quality food tasty.

If im not mistaken the south in general is more obese than other areas. I imagine southern whites are also more lokely to be obese as they were eating alot of thr same food as much if it was you know prepared by blacke people. Even if black people move from yhe south the food culture is born from there.

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Trotskyist t1_j4slknp wrote

This seems like it’d be relatively easy to control for.

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2017hayden t1_j4ta4fp wrote

Would it though? There’s so many factors involved. Stress for example often causes people to revert to old bad habits even if they’re self destructive.

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Dinklemeier t1_j4q2knv wrote

Why is obesity seen historically as a sign of wealth in india then? Billions of poor people around the globe are not fat. Im solidly upper middle class and slowly getting fatter. Am i the victim somehow of racism in not aware of making me fat? Or is it the highly unlikely combination of me eating more calories than i burn while having a sedentary lifestyle?

I'm going with racism. That way i can blame someone else for my slow slide into obesity.

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2017hayden t1_j4q8568 wrote

Obesity was always seen as a sign of wealth historically because in those times rich people were the only ones who could afford to eat enough to get fat and didn’t have to work in hard labor for a living. That’s no longer the case. There are plenty of very poor people who can still afford food just not good food and very few people work hard labor like those in medieval or renaissance societies did. Historical circumstances and reasoning don’t really apply here as societal norms have changed so much since that time.

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chicagotodetroit t1_j4qfe8o wrote

>Billions of poor people around the globe are not fat.

Is it possible that it's because those people don't have the same highly-processed junk food that is prevalent in the US?

Seems like if you're poor in other countries, you eat things like beans, rice, and whatever grows locally, but if you're poor in the US, you eat things like McDonalds and food with high fructose corn syrup, excess sugar and salt, dyes, and cheap additives and fillers.

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Dinklemeier t1_j4qftd6 wrote

So.. in other words.. not racism?

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ChrysMYO t1_j4qhj90 wrote

Access to those foods is due to racism. Zoning laws for where convience stores are located vs groceries vs fast foods. Transportation hubs vs walkability access to food sources.

Subsidized food programs that priorize certain sugars and carbs that conflict with modern recommended health trends.

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Dinklemeier t1_j4qsbvi wrote

And the families that are still obese that shop at the same stores as me? Obviously they live close enough to shop there. Are the white ones obese because of poor choices but the black ones because of racism? At some point one should take responsibility for what you stick in your body. There are plenty of skinny minorites too. Thru just eat less or burn more than they take in.

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Altima-OG t1_j4qeol1 wrote

Depends on who you ask, but in olden times, and India has a lot of antiquated values, but again, depends who you ask.

If you're upper middle class and fat in America, you usually are actually lax in your dietary habits. However, you can also be a poor or lower/lower middle class person who has issues with maintaining preventive care, like working receiving in retail or two jobs in the service industry and work hard, but have no knowledge of good dietary practices, and/or time to prepare good food, and that shows as obesity. The high cost of inflation from greedy corporations and lack of basic food items due to logistical issues not helping poorer Americans.

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Tearakan t1_j4qhc5k wrote

Because in the past food was much harder to come by. It was seen as a sign of wealth in western countries too in the past.

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halisme t1_j4prlta wrote

Actually, this is pretty explainable through an economic lens. Cheap foods tend to be higher in things like fat and sugar due to various subsidies in the US, poor people are more likely to eat cheap food because that's what available to them. Black people are more likely to be poor, ergo a higher rate of obesity when not controlling for economic class.

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Altima-OG t1_j4qc7z0 wrote

It does actually make sense. Because in those other countries(and you'd have to be specific, because different countries have different factors), people can forced into usually high intensity farm work/manual labor which can offset the obesity, but not the hypertension, as even athletes can suffer from that. Renal failure brought on by lack of preventive care for the poor and working poor is also a problem as well. So lack of preventive care and the ability to take off work to get that care, lack of resources to have a balanced diet and time needed to make good meals, the terrible infrastructure in black neighborhoods that have tainted drinking water. So there are many factors one has to look into that, if one is just looking for confirmation bias to win an Internet argument, rather than what constitutes a focus on the cause and a solution to the problem, then we reach an impasse.

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Xolver t1_j4qkmbd wrote

Well, not to put too much focus on winning the internet argument, but I did say it makes sense only with really good proof. You wrote about a lot of different things, but not about whether there's good proof institutional racism specifically causes people to get fat. This is r/science, so science me.

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ethancole97 t1_j4r7455 wrote

Food deserts. Where depending on the racial makeup of a neighborhood access to grocery stores and healthy food is non existent but fast food/convenience stores are easily accessible on foot but getting to a grocery store would require a car or a good enough public transportation system. When you live in an area where walking to McDonald’s is easier than planning a chunk of your day getting to and from the closest grocery store you would probably cut your loses and just eat at McDonald’s.

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Xolver t1_j4rjiut wrote

I must not be articulating myself very well, although I'm not so sure how I can do better. I'll give it one last go and then if it doesn't work take the L to save everyone some time.

I understand the concept of food deserts. Now, what evidence is there that specifically institutional racism is causing it to occur more often [if it does] for black people, or to go back to the broader question, what evidence is there that institutional racism is causing obesity in the black community?

Put another way, if I were a statistician (and I am not, so give me some leeway in the terminology please), the null hypothesis should be that we don't know what's causing black obesity (or maybe that it's something much more trivial such as personal choice), and the alternative hypothesis should be that institutional racism is causing black obesity. But the null hypothesis is that we don't know, so we should cross a good enough evidentiary threshold to reject the null hypothesis to think about "accepting" our alternative hypothesis (I know we don't rigorously accept the alternative hypothesis in statistics - I'm just trying to pass a barrier here, to say that something should at least go in the direction of convincing us it's specifically institutional racism).

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ChrysMYO t1_j4qgs7j wrote

Food deserts, the way the US government subsidizes corn and sugar industries. US subsidy programs for food produce and pricing.

Structural access to healthcare. Early childhood access to healthcare. Stable access to food during early childhood development. Health insurance being tied to full employment.

Epigenetic adaption to generational exposure to famine and food insecurity during slavery and Jim Crow Apartheid.

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Blue165 t1_j4r0zq3 wrote

Being unable to access fresh food is though.

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_PM_ME_YOUR_FORESKIN t1_j4rzc4h wrote

Your post history would suggest you’re 0% interested in actually changing your views. I don’t have time or energy to change your mind - but I can at least link to a different post.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BlackPeopleTwitter/comments/108k59e/so_saying_obese_which_is_a_clinical_term_is_now/j3udti9/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3

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Xolver t1_j4u653e wrote

Talking about my post history is fine and dandy, but what you did is just add more anecdotes with an imaginative story in a long comment that gives zero evidence and many suppositions. I could tackle some of those suppositions by citing that black people with higher income who obviously have both higher possibility for vehicular movement or moving to a different area altogether actually have higher and not lower obesity than poor black people which are more affected by all the things you write about (and it would be true, since that is what the literature says), but you have started with a foregone conclusion and only want to discuss why it's true, instead of discussing WHETHER it's true in the first place.

But guess what, again, this is r/science, the burden of proof is on the people making these claims and not me. Notice no one is giving even one piece of evidence for the very specific question asked, only anecdotes around it. That, my friend, is a sign of a religion, not a well thought out scientific theory. And it's not just to my comment, because your next move would obviously be to say that they don't want to humor me (while humoring me, like you did).

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