More on the Psychology of Fat

As we have noted more than once, there are oddities about how obesity has been regarded in different places and at various points in history. In some parts of the world, civilization has entered a phase where, rather than causing people to be emaciated, a shortage of money could (against all logic) make them fat. Today, low-income people are sold a plethora of products filled with more fattening ingredients than nutritious ones.

In the Middle Ages, to be fat and to have fat wives and heirs was way cool, a power move, a proud public assertion of worthiness, and a self-declaration of importance that was widely accepted as such, regardless of the thoughts of any lower members of society.

In the present day, a big waistline might mean either wealth or poverty. In circumstances where the wealthy are viewed as greedy parasites, to call such a person fat is an insult. At the same time, in any societal environment where the poor are viewed as undeserving sub-humans who eat up all the taxes that are unfairly extracted from the wealthy, to be called fat is an equally potent insult when hurled at them.

The vagaries of earthly life

Some people enter the world with blue eyes. Others are born deaf. Some emerge from the womb left-handed. And some arrive with a genetic predisposition to obesity — or are thrust into circumstances which (for them, anyway) will make it inescapable.

Skip ahead four decades. In which of those situations, after 40 years of existence, is a human most apt to be mocked, ridiculed, disrespected, scorned, rejected, vilified, blamed, or shamed? Which of those conditions is most likely to cause a grown adult — who may be successful, and even fulfilled, in one or more aspects of normal life — to seek help from a mental health professional? Obesity, of course.

Plus, the lack of choice

Another factor here is that while a person may quite readily have the freedom to choose between being left-handed and wealthy, or left-handed and impoverished, other situations are not so amenable, and obesity is one of them. In the past few years, advances have been made in this area of knowledge, to the point where more people realize that obesity can definitely influence a person’s prospects, and even lead them into a life of relative financial deprivation.

A typical citation comes from the journal BMJ Open:

Studies suggest that the obese are more likely to be perceived as lazy, unsuccessful, weak-willed and undisciplined. On basis of these negative stereotypes, the obese face various weight penalties in the labour market, which include higher job insecurity, lower chances for a job and general discrimination.

Along with many other sources, that one has noted the mutual disadvantages of being both fat and broke:

[L]ower income is associated with higher levels of psychosocial stressors which include decreased control over life, and higher insecurity, social isolation, stress and mental disorders.

[T]he stigmatization of the obese also correlates with material (ie, less income through weight penalty), behavioral (ie, change in health-promoting behavior through discrimination), as well as psychosocial factors (ie, self-stigma may inflict lower control over life, social isolation, stress, lower self-esteem) that may, again, lead to a higher risk of obesity.

One reason why such individuals seek counseling is to escape the curse of self-stigmatization, which all too readily transmogrifies into psychological malfunction. It’s bad enough to have other people metaphorically beating you up, but when you start doing it yourself, the situation really calls for intervention.

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Income and obesity: what is the direction of the relationship?,” BMJ.com, January 2018
Image by Kaz_Graphics/Pixabay

The Historical Psychology of Fat, Continued

As a previous post noted, to be called skinny used to be an insult. It implied that no one cared whether you lived or died, or that you were too stupid and inept to earn enough to feed yourself. Anyone who was that poor would be considered worthless and deserving of starvation.

Then some parts of the world grew a little softer, and a person who was skinny because of poverty might be pitied and even helped. Then, we got to where if someone is thin, it might only mean they can afford to belong to a fitness club.

At any rate, for thousands of years, the norm was for poverty to cause undernourishment and low weight. But now, because of some creepy ingredients being added to food, it appears quite possible that poverty can cause obesity.

Food on the brain

Moving on, here are a few more glimpses from the documented past. As in many other departments of human experience, a lot of the accepted wisdom doesn’t even make sense, or makes sense only within a limited repertoire of assumptions about life and the world.

There are some broad observable trends. For instance, along with what people eat and the amount they eat, the centuries have also seen the politicization and weaponization of other factors, like how, when, and where they eat.

Is there really such a thing as a great restaurant critic? Why should that person receive any sort of reward, or even a salary? Why does society tolerate the existence of a cult that fetishizes food? What if we simplified life by all just existing on a canned energy drink or an IV infusion?

And naturally, if humans insist on placing such importance on food, controversy will unavoidably stem from the inevitable results of eating, or not eating, that food. The most noticeable results in those cases are underweight people and overweight people.

End obesity before it ends you

In the 60s, the social movements that swept across the United States asked such questions as, “How dare anyone criticize what race I am, or what I smoke?” And, “Who is that politician, anyway, to tell me I have to go halfway around the world and kill some rice farmers?” Or, “If I want to sleep with a hundred different partners, whose business is that?”

Maybe the day will come when people rise up and march, carrying signs like “Fat As I Wanna Be!” How about, “Bigger Is Better!” “I’m Not Overweight, You’re Insubstantial!” Might it even be possible to legislate against discrimination and bring anti-fat bigots to justice through the law?

For some corpulent people, is their main problem a stubborn reluctance to do what a slew of busybodies see fit to demand? What part should the sciences of psychology and psychiatry play in the obesity issue?

One of the most influential Bible stories is about the original Christian using superhuman powers to share nutrition with a large crowd, no questions asked. The Prophet of Islam told his followers they should absolutely feed people who don’t have enough to eat. Among spiritually inclined humans, to have a bad attitude toward the hungry is pretty much universally frowned upon.

Other sides

According to some segments of pop culture, to become obese gives the world permission to make the accusation: “You don’t care what other people think about you!” — as if that were a bad thing.

But… Indifference to the opinions of others is a trait that has often moved humanity forward. As one example, people who choose lives of service, dedicating themselves to caring for the poor and the sick, are indifferent to the opinions of relatives and friends who ridicule them for bypassing the possibilities of wealth and privilege.

If Mother Teresa had cousins who criticized her for hanging out with beggars, she didn’t care. So maybe there is more to it than that.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Image by Boy-Employee and OpenClipart-Vectors/Pixabay

The Historical Psychology of Fat

Over the centuries of human life on Earth, obesity has always been a judgment magnet. Through a long chapter of European history, vast populations of serfs were ruled by a tiny minority of “nobles,” or people with inherited wealth. To the average peasant, a wealthy person’s obesity translated as a painful reminder that peasants were always expected to get along on almost nothing.

For a rich man to be fat was the classic example of adding insult to injury. For him to have a fat wife was what we today would call a “flex,” the cultural equivalent of owning a car that every man who saw it would envy. He was telling the world, “I can afford to support a human who does nothing but eat, and pop out a kid once in a while.”

An overweight member of the royal family was a man whose appearance publicly and proudly announced, “I spend half my day devouring rare, expensive, and fattening foods that you peasants can’t even dream of tasting. Furthermore, there is no such thing as an overweight duke, because however much a duke weighs is, by definition, the correct amount. And oh, by the way, I have never done a day’s actual work in my life.”

Times were hard

Long before money as we know it had arrived on the scene, there were many possible reasons for the lack of food. Maybe no seeds were available to plant because their storage space flooded, or rodents ate them. Maybe there was a drought, or an insect invasion. Or all the healthy men were taken from their fields and sent off to fight the king’s stupid war.

At a different stage of history, there might be no harvest because farm machinery parts were unavailable. Or the civilian population’s food resources might be limited because of rationing, necessary due to another king’s unnecessary war.

At any rate, if some people looked emaciated, the reasons for lack of nutrition were widely comprehended. Regular people understood that only the rich could afford to be well-nourished. Also, the rich could get away with insulting the poor for not carrying much body fat, and thus publicly announcing their low status in the class system, as if it wasn’t clear enough already. In various times and places, this attitude persisted through the centuries.

Bad attitudes

The sight of a skinny person could inspire such cruel reactions as, “You are not worthy of the expenditure of food required to keep you alive” (which would, of course, be verbalized in a much cruder and crueler way). On the most basic level, the obvious implication of pointing out someone’s thinness is “Your mother didn’t love you enough to feed you.” That universally applicable insult is a rude assertion that can be expressed in numerous ways and cause a literal gut reaction.

At the level of least ugliness, the hidden meaning behind insulting someone’s thinness is, “Obviously, you are too lazy to work for your daily bread.” (Otherwise, there would be some meat on your bones.) Some societies do try to feed people.

And of course, there are always a certain number of citizens who hate to be taxed just for the sake of feeding children. Such folks may not even recognize why they feel so strongly about it. But the subconscious mind of this person may be putting up an objection like, “Why should I care about, and be financially responsible for, babies whose own parents don’t even care enough to nourish them?” The thought process here is, “People are required to deserve every bite of food, and if they can’t manage to do that, too bad for them; it’s not my problem.”

There is plenty of blame to go around. A well-fed person might look at a starveling and think, “You don’t work, so why should you eat?” In other contexts, no such resentment has occurred. In India, over the centuries, millions of people have earned spiritual merit by filling the rice bowls of monks who give up everything to spend their whole lives praying for the world and every creature in it.

Nowadays

Recent history has shown us that, counterintuitively, poverty can cause obesity because of the weird ingredients added to hundreds of food products. When it comes to emotions about body size, a lot of deep subconscious material is involved. In recent history, it has been relatively easy to understand why a low income has so readily caused people to be underweight. Quite obviously, the main cause of malnourishment is: not enough money for groceries.

During what is called the Great Depression, for instance, Americans understood this equation all too well. By and large, on the whole, it was a pretty well-settled and comprehensible fact that poor people tended to be thin and rich people tended to be obese.

There seems to be an overwhelming number of reasons to scorn people who are visibly obese. It used to make more sense when it meant, “I hate you because you obviously are rich, and probably keep all the food for yourself, and don’t share.” Except now, that instinct misses the mark, and it is actually more probable that an obese person is not rich. Of course, in some quarters, it is considered okay to hate skinny people.

According to one study,

[I]ncome […] is linked to higher health literacy which, in turn, is positively related to health-promoting behaviors (ie, healthy nutrition, physical activity).

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Income and obesity: what is the direction of the relationship? A systematic review and meta-analysis,” NIH.gov, January 2018
Image by jcoope12/Pixabay

That Reciprocal Causation Trap

Journalists in the obesity field have written about why poor people become overweight, and also about how overweight people can become economically disadvantaged. Between those two inconvenient facts, a mutual causative relationship exists, which has been mentioned previously by Childhood Obesity News.

To say “mentioned” is an understatement, because the issue has many facets, and to effectively illustrate them all requires more than a few words.

Brief generalization: People on the lower end of the economic scale are vulnerable to obesity because financial conditions often restrict their access to health-inducing foods, and also preclude many sorts of healthcare, both preventive and curative.

Limits and caution

When some thought is invested in the issue, it is easy to pinpoint specifics. For example, people with low or no income are unlikely to travel across town for more reasonable food prices. Volume discounts are tempting, but even if all three of the kids wear backpacks, there is a limit to how many cans of beans can be transported home on the bus.

Vegetables can last a long time in a freezer, if a family is fortunate enough to have one. If the opportunity arises to get hold of multiple large bags of peas or corn on sale, a supply of low-calorie veggies is a wonderful asset for a health-conscious family. But first… You need to have a freezer.

Low-income people often have no choice other than to live in a dangerous neighborhood. A walk after supper, to burn a few calories, sounds like a swell idea, until you get mugged. Low-income people generally can’t afford gym memberships, and while there is no guarantee that a person with that opportunity will make the best use of it, the odds are certainly better than when they are not even allowed through the door.

Official documentation

Let’s look at a typical, fairly recent government-published report on a systematic review and meta-analysis that explored the phenomenon in depth, pointing out that obesity can be a causative factor of poverty, as “obese people drift into lower-income jobs due to labor–market discrimination and public stigmatization.” It was by no means the first document to highlight this reciprocal effect, and will certainly not be the last.

That meta-analysis encompassed 21 studies: two from Canada, three from the United Kingdom, and 16 originating in the United States. Its conclusions did not cause worldwide headlines, but indicated that persistent examination of the topic could potentially lead to a meaningful increase in attention, especially when a growing awareness of what goes into food products does not correlate with any serious efforts to change the habits of food manufacturers.

Society’s ability to ignore signs of corporate malfeasance is only one roadblock. Individuals are acutely aware of inequities in their everyday lives. Even when other factors are equal, obese people tend to be passed over for job opportunities. Clothes that fit may be prohibitively expensive. Even if people can afford gym memberships, the embarrassment factor may prevent them from doing so.

Thousands of individuals, if asked, could add thousands of examples of how body weight and size can turn everyday life into an ordeal:

Findings suggest that there is more consistent evidence for reverse causality. Therefore, there is a need to examine reverse causality processes in more detail to understand the relation between income and obesity… Obesity is a major risk factor for all-cause mortality, a number of non-communicable diseases and reduced quality of life.

Why does this even matter? Because in general, all the associated numbers are going up, with no indication of reversal any time soon. A very specific possibility on the horizon is the shadow of a reinstated military draft, along with hints of war that are more than subtle. Once America wakes up to the reality of how few conscription-ready individuals are suitable to be trained as soldiers, there might be a problem.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “Income and obesity: what is the direction of the relationship? A systematic review and meta-analysis,” NIH.gov, January 2018
Images by hellbergstina and Mohamed_hassan/Pixabay