As an observer of popular culture I found this new long term study linking weekly church attendance in young adults to high rates of obesity when those people reached middle age, very intriguing.
Praise the lard? Religion linked to obesity in young adults
Weekly church activities boost obesity 50 percent by middle age, 18-year study shows
âOur main finding was that people with a high frequency of religious participation in young adulthood were 50 percent more likely to become obese by middle age than those with no religious participation in young adulthood,â says Matthew Feinstein, the studyâs lead investigator and a fourth-year medical student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine.
âAnd that is true even after we adjusted for variables like age, race, gender, education, income, and baseline body mass index," he added.
The study, presented at a meeting of the American Heart Association, followed 2,433 men and women starting between the ages of 20 and 32 for 18 years. Study subjects were all of normal weight at the beginning of the study. By the end, however, those who had attended a religious function at least once a week were more likely to be obese, posting a body mass index of 30 or higher. Previous research by Northwestern Medicine has found a correlation between religious involvement and obesity in middle age and older adults.
Religion and obesity: Study links church and being fat
The study tracked 2,433 young men and women for 18 years in Chicago, Minneapolis, Birmingham, Ala., and Oakland, Calif.
Feinstein says while obesity appears to be an issue for religious people, previous studies have shown that the faithful tend to live longer, be less likely to smoke, and to have better mental health status.
Those factors may compensate for any net ill effects from obesity, but smoking rates have plummeted among the non-devout in recent years.
Now consider this new correlation between church attendance and obesity with the long recognized statistics showing a much higher incidence of obesity in the Deep South.
Summary:
While the strong upward trend in rates of obesity and overweight is a national phenomenon, the South appears to have been more affected than other regions. Prevalence estimates of obesity, collected through the Centers for Disease Control and Preventionâs (CDC) Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), show that in the year 2005, all three States with obesity rates (defined as body mass index (BMI) > 30) above 30 percent were in the South: Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia. All other Southern States, with the exception of Delaware, Florida, Maryland, and Virginia, had rates of obesity in the range of 25 to 29 percent. No Southern States had obesity rates below 20 percent.
USDA
Of course I don't have to point out that Whites in the Deep South also vote heavily Republican with the ratio running up to 10 to 1 in some places. People who attend church regularly are much more likely to vote Republican no matter what part of the country you look at.
Gallup Poll September 24, 2010
What matters most from a practical perspective is the fact that frequent church attenders are likely to vote Republican this fall.
Blacks, in short, fly in the face of the broad American pattern by which religiosity predicts partisanship.
Thus, when we back out black voters, the affect of church attendance among whites grows even starker.
In light of these demographic factors Elephants would seem to be an apt symbols for the Republican Party.
I thought the juxtaposition of those three demographic factors was interesting enough to share in a diary. What are your thoughts?