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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   26627 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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Are young, wealthy, educated people in Alabama actually much fatter than young, wealthy, educated people in Oregon, though? It’s not like SEC sorority girls are (typically) fat. I’d be interested in @Walterodim’s opinion too. It’s true that the Deep South is much fatter than the Northwest and Colorado, but it’s also much poorer. There are also ethnic differences in obesity rates that obviously affect Mississippi’s rate vs, say, Washington.

Or, put otherwise, are poor, trailer trash, people-of-Walmart whites in Colorado actually much skinnier than their peers in Missouri?

Southern food is much more calorie intense than other parts of the country.

Sure, but there's a limit to that. McDonalds is available everywhere in the country.

Sure, but most, even poor people, don’t eat McDonald’s every day.

There’s definitely a regional tastes and cuisine thing going on, like prevalence of sweet tea or certain southern deserts. I tend to agree that junk food varies less across the country than home cooking, but, like, incidence of grocery store fried chicken or likelihood to drink sweet tea(which usually has more calories than regular soda) probably makes enough of a difference at the margins to be noticeable.

My first guess is that a lot of this is urban/rural just because of the fact of public transit. When I visit my sister in DC I walk and take the subway, while when I am at home I drive everywhere, just because of the material realities of where I am. So urban populations will, all things being equal, probably have a more active default lifestyle just because of this and thus I would expect they have lower levels of obesity even if both have the same diet and inclination to exercise.

Subjectively, I would guess they are, but it certainly narrows the gap. There's such a consistent pairing of urban environments with concentrations of young, wealthy, educated Blue Tribers that the layers of confounds are too much for me to tease apart mentally. One anecdotal addendum to that is that the secret right-wingers that I know deep in Blue territory are an unusually fit and healthy group, with a concentration in masculine-coded sports like powerlifting and fighting.

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