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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25859 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 25, 2024

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Health, Fitness, Obesity, and Politics

Something that’s been bouncing around in my head for quite some time is how people relate their politics to their personal health. This story from The Daily Beast on Wisconsin Senate candidate Eric Hovde has resurfaced this for me by providing a clear illustration of what I perceive as a current difference between the American left and right on this issue:

“Look, we have an explosion of Type 2 diabetes right now. Explosion. Obesity is off the charts. You know, we’re removing people from being responsible for their own health,” Hovde said.

“If they all of a sudden started to realize that they’re going to pay more for their health care by consuming, you know, by consuming massive amounts of soda every day or fatty foods and not exercising, maybe they would change their behavioral patterns.”

Hovde then claimed obesity was a “personal choice.”

“It’s a personal choice,” he said, “but there should be consequences to those personal choices. Fine, you want to do that, you become obese, your health care is going to cost more. Or, the quality—or not the quality, but the amount of health care may go down, because you may not have the money to afford it.

“You have to force personal responsibility back to people, and also make them smart consumers.”

The Daily Beast helpfully loops in a putative expert on the matter, a professor at NYU:

Jay said that Hovde’s comments singling out obesity as something that should raise people’s insurance rates reveals that “either you’re not understanding or you’re really discriminating against people who have a chronic disease.”

“It’s assuming that obesity is some sort of moral failing that people need to be punished for,” she said. “That’s not true.

She added: “It’s a pretty awful and dangerous thing to say.”

This is the latest spat about these sorts of things and probably lays the dichotomous beliefs out about as clearly as possible. There is a policy angle (some people think insurance should be risk-based, some don’t), but that is comparatively dry relative to the beliefs in personal responsibility and how those views extend into political beliefs. There was an old throwaway post from the dissident right blog Dividuals that stuck with me a decade later because of how clearly it captured something that I felt when I read the left-leaning positions:

One realistic way to parodize liberals / lefties / Progressives / feminists / SJWs etc. would be to present them as narcissistic, solipsistic, self-absorbed people with huge and fragile egos who demand that everything should revolve around themselves.

…

The simple fact that feminists tend to be fat would only make, in itself, a weak joke. But when you find they run around parading their fatness, and make it a political goal to make men somehow adore it – imagine it, human beings making it a political goal that other should have a positive opinion of their own personal fsckups! “I have crap for character, now praise me for it, oppressor!” Imagine programmers making it a political goal to convince people that bugs are actually good!

At the time, I wasn’t particularly right-aligned, so this wasn’t really an ingroup-outgroup thing, but an articulation of a growing frustration I had with people on the left, this absolute refusal to ever tell people to own up to their situations, take responsibility for where they are in life, and fix it. Everything, always, forever is just contingent on circumstances, completely outside of their control. While I could understand the arguments about this sort of thing when it comes to wealth accumulation or crime, to be so extreme as to not grant that people have agency over what they eat was the kind of thing that was just steadily pushing me away from having any inclination to share goals with the economic left.

Since then, there has been a steady (if not particularly large) genre of articles characterizing fitness as a right-wing phenomenon. Some of these are really silly things about how gyms are gateways to far-right extremism, but let’s look at one example that’s a little more self-serious and not obviously ridiculous:

The study found a significant correlation between those men who were heavier and stronger and the belief that some social groups should dominate others. These men were also less likely to support the redistribution of wealth, a typically left wing principle.

Specifically, the researchers found a specific correlation between the number of hours spent in the gym and having less egalitarian socioeconomic beliefs.

Dr Michael Price, a senior lecturer in psychology at the university and the lead author of the study, suggested the findings could come down to three things: The result of the men “calibrating their egalitarianism to their own formidability”, that less egalitarian men strive to become more muscular or there could be a third variable at play.

“Our results suggest that wealthier men who are more formidable physically are more likely to oppose redistribution of wealth,” he said. “Essentially, they seem more motivated to defend their resources. But less wealthy men who are still physically formidable don’t seem more inclined to support redistribution either. They’re not demanding a share of the wealth.

Vice covers the same thing, but with an oddly smug glee:

To all you gym-bro haters amongst us, come, be seated. This one's for you. Science—objective, empirically tested science, the science that tells us that the ice caps are melting—has confirmed what many of us have long suspected: Gym bros are right-wing jerks.

…

Price's findings? That rich muscle dudes are the worst! Under those rock-hard abs lie the rock-hard souls of men who doesn't believe in spreading their riches around. "It's basically your tolerance to the idea that wealth shouldn't be redistributed," Dr. Price explains. "Some people thought it was horrible; some people thought it was fine."

If there was ever a line that called for a YesChad.jpg response, it’s that one. While I am not a particularly big guy, I will self-report that I do believe my work as an endurance athlete has substantially shifted my views against egalitarian perspectives and more towards personal responsibility. Rather than modeling that as being about domination and aggression, I would propose that the mechanism is the personal sense of accomplishment and mastery coupled with knowing how much of it is a direct product of your internal locus of control. I’m not decently fast because of some random freak accident of nature - I wasn’t fast when I started running, I’m much faster now, and I keep getting faster in almost perfect concert with how much work I put into the sport. Others will fare better with less work, such is life, but we all have a great deal of control over our outcomes. So, yeah, I am inclined to believe that pursuing fitness as a hobby will tend to lead one to the right of their current positions.

The belief that fitness is a right-wing thing doesn’t stop with this sort of relatively modest claim about egalitarian tendencies though. The Society for Cultural Anthropology has a weird writeup on Gym Fascism. To go nutpicking a bit, the Manitoba University newspaper has Fitness culture and fatphobia are fascistic - Our obsession with looking the same is culling joy and body diversity:

Prof. Brian Pronger points out that almost everything that we stress about physical education centres around maximizing the body’s performance. It’s the way that we are all expected to structure our lives around our fitness regimens, and those five days a week when we’re supposed to work out must be in service to making ourselves as strong as possible.

Fitness fanaticism constipates our personal growth. Think about what it means to “work on yourself.” It often means to work out, as if your character is tied to your physical strength and muscle tone.

OK, too much nutpicking. Back to a serious journalistic outlet, Time magazine. Just before the New Year, Time published a story that might dissuade people from making an ill-advised resolutions for 2023 titled The White Supremacist Origins of Exercise, and 6 Other Surprising Facts About the History of U.S. Physical Fitness:

It was super interesting reading the reflections of fitness enthusiasts in the early 20th century. They said we should get rid of corsets, corsets are an assault on women’s form, and that women should be lifting weights and gaining strength. At first, you feel like this is so progressive.

Then you keep reading, and they’re saying white women should start building up their strength because we need more white babies. They’re writing during an incredible amount of immigration, soon after enslaved people have been emancipated. This is totally part of a white supremacy project. So that was a real “holy crap” moment as a historian, where deep archival research really reveals the contradictions of this moment.

Oh dear.

Anyway, to return to that Hovde story that kicked things off, I find it pretty interesting to think about how these things play with different crowds. Something that’s kind of obvious is that Red Tribe America is not actually very fit at all, while Blue Tribe power centers consistently have quite a few fitness-minded individuals. Nonetheless, when Hovde says that fat people are responsible for their own bodies, it seems to me that most Red Tribers basically agree and accept that they’re fat because they like burgers and beer a little too much, while the Blue Tribers recoil at the suggestion that people are responsible for eating themselves into Type 2 diabetes. This reminds me of how discussions of marriage and morality play out as well - educated elites, regardless of political persuasion, stay married at very high rates and seem to be well aware that this is the correct way to live, but are hesitant to say this about the underclass. They hold standards for themselves that they believe don’t apply to others. As far as electoral politics goes, I doubt this little newscycle item means much of anything, but it does provide a fun case study and litmus test for perspectives on the topic.

This little quote from NYU professor

discriminating against people who have a chronic disease.

People who are fat because of a chronic disease is in an absolute minority. The majority have issues with their size is because of eating too much ultra-processed foods full of subsidized crops like corn that is cheap and exercising too little compared to their energy intake. Is it a personal choice? Well if you are poor living in a "Food Desert" (i.e. a place where grocery stores with non ultra-processed food are far away) eating what ever is available, how much choice do you have? If you don't live near a grocery store it usually means that you are poor. Is poverty a choice?

As I see it the polemic of "personal choice" vs "chronic disease" is a faux debate disguising the fact that the options for the poorest urban areas and poorest "flyover country" don't have options with getting food without subsidized crops with high energy content. The only chronic condition they have is being poor.

So where does that leave "gym fascism"? Perhaps "Cui Bono" selling ultra processed foods to the poorest population is a multi-billion dollar business and it is also subsidized by politicians, they get to sell medicine for the consequences of that food(insulin for diabetes, pills against hypertension and so on) and so on. What happens if people notices this, that they are essentially being poisoned by the food supply? Better nip it in the bud the notion to have less processed food and more exercise cause losses. Lets call anyone who has that idea fascist? I don't know... It is a conspiracy theory...

Maybe you are not aware of it but many countries - including USA since 2013 - declared obesity itself as a disease. The decision makers in American Medical Association openly admit, that they completely abandoned long-standing criteria for diseases such as disease having some symptoms as opposed to being symptom by itself. Imagine for instance declaring malnutrition itself as a disease, it makes no sense. Malnutrition can be simple lack of food and thus not caused by anything special, or it can be a symptom of some other metabolic or psychological disease. The same with obesity, we can create a "cure" that will work 100% of the time, just admit people into anti-obesity camp where they will have their food intake as well as exercise managed. As the saying goes, there were no obese victims in Gulags or other prison camps, the "cure" is easy.

Instead what AMA did was stick with "utilitarian" definition of a disease in order to "destigmatize" the condition as the word "disease" suggests, that people may not have a control over it such as with some pathogens. Additionally if we allow this definition we can now direct the whole infrastructure used to treat diseases into this new problem. I guess this it the precursor of the new trend such as when CDC declared racism as a public health threat, who knows maybe in the future racism will become an official disease that will treated institutionally or by some brain surgery or pills.

I keep coming back to the fact that Japan does actual fat shaming, on an institutional level even (employers fined if employee waist sizes are too big) and as a result doesn't suffer from high obesity.

This should put the disease model of obesity to bed, unless we believe the Japanese, who love 7-11s and convenience perhaps even more than Westerners do, are somehow genetically immune or their food is still so much more pure.

Anecdotally, when I lived in Japan for a year I lost a lot of weight without even really trying. I don't think my diet was very healthy either, I was consuming a lot of cola, fried chicken, ramen and beer. I was walking a lot more so maybe that's it? But it could equally well be something in the environment, maybe all the second-hand smoke.

Living in a modern Asian city (or New York) definitely has a lot more walking built-in and I absolutely believe you lost weight. But were you... Japanese guy thin?

Hahaha no of course not. Still, it was amazing how easy it was to lose weight there. I wasnt going to the gym or watching my diet or anything.

They also walk more and their portion sizes are way more reasonable.

Don't Asians have some gene that makes them less likely to get fat (but more likely to get diabetes and heart disease) as well?

There's a documentary I watched recently regarding Japanese longevity, and one of the people they interview remarks on how the introduction of western diet is having an effect on young Japanese people, making them more obese.

Genetics can play a part, but there's a point where we need to at least consider that there's something whonky going on, here.

Are Japanese-Americans much fatter than their mainland brothers? From what I see not by much(23 VS 24, but it's including all Asians).

Do you know what a sumo wrestler is?

or their food is still so much more pure.

I wonder how much HFCS you can find in their food that they get from 7-11s? The options for good food at 7-11s AFAIK better than anywhere else ( not that I've looked myself but know people who have lived in Japan and talked about the cultural difference).

At world market prices, HFCS was more expensive than cane sugar, so the only products which contained HFCS are ones that are intentionally made to American recipes. HFCS was an originally an American work-around for a cockamamie government sugar policy, and is now the driver for that policy (because of the lobbying power of Archer-Daniels-Midland).

This is starting to change as cane sugar prices have increased since 2010 and the Chinese are getting into the HFCS business in response.

I mean, Japan probably does have stricter food purity than the USA.

Yeah, those sandwiches you can get at 7-11 or Lawson probably are just literally built different compared to how it'd be done here in the US.

Hey, if they took a half hour walk to the supermarket and brought their groceries back with them, that would be enough exercise to keep them in shape!

I don't disagree but I'd like to register that drivers in my particular region of the Midwest drive like they want to kill everybody, including themselves. I have two grocery stores practically two blocks away but I'm not walking it if I can avoid it. I don't have a sidewalk for most of it and I'd have to cross an intersection that's constantly handling traffic from the freeway exit.

The thing that really kills me is that the town is actively working on updating road infrastructure, but they didn't put a sidewalk in when they added two more lanes to the road.

Interesting. I guess I just assumed there would be space to walk - I'm not American.

So you think that "food deserts" don't exist because you can walk an 30 minutes to yours? There doesn't exist places where people live where they have to drive an hour to get "real food" while passing various corporate fast food chains on the way?

I didn't say that food deserts don't exist, in fact I agree that a lot of American food is chemical slop not fit for human consumption. Yet there's also a level of personal responsibility (and social shaming) that's clearly absent. You can see it in this libertine 'whatever floats your boat' attitude many Americans seem to have:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=to7BMBJR9P4

A real food desert is somewhere like Niger or Ethiopia. While there are structural problems, there are also solutions. You can order groceries to be delivered in some places. I imagine there are farmers markets out in rural USA.

I can see an argument for saying that the obese are people with a chronic disease tautologically: arguably being obese is a disease, and it's certainly not an acute condition (nobody gets obese overnight, and nobody stops being obese overnight). Of course if you take that perspective then I'm not sure how you can square it with "fat pride." Nobody goes around being proud of having multiple sclerosis, or saying that goiters are beautiful. And the fact that it is a chronic disease does not absolve someone of responsibility for acquiring that condition: cirrhosis of the liver is another chronic disease that is almost always the result of personal choices.

If you look at the history of "fat pride" it essentially started as dating for guys that loved fat women. And the post-modernist got its claws into it and gave it the social construct treatment and here we are: "healthy at every size". But the greater point I tried to make that some of the obese people have less choice in becoming obese, because their options are limited with what food is available to them. Yes being obese is a disease but I'm just making the claim that it is in big part caused by ultra-processed food much like cirrhosis is caused by overconsumption of alcohol, but it is much more reversible with better food and more excercise.

But what caused those personal choices? If you were them, you would have made the same ones.

Only if you assume first that free will doesn't exist (and if it doesn't then this discussion doesn't even matter but it's not like I could stop us from having it).

Well we have proof that they made those choices based on the life they lead. Given the same factors the same thing would happen exactly the same way, because it did happen that way. If you were exactly the same as them in every way then the outcome would be the same.

I agree with you that if you were them, you would have made the same choices, but that comment didn't respond to what @ChickenOverlord was saying.

That is:

You: if you were the same as them, you'd make the same choices

ChickenOverlord: Only if choices are indeterminate

You: if you were the same as them, you'd make the same choices

That merely repeats your argument. It doesn't address his.

That said, I think both of you assume too much about the implications of determinism, saying that it strips one of responsibility.

@ChickenOverlord, you say, "and if it doesn't then this discussion doesn't even matter but it's not like I could stop us from having it." This does not seem true. This discussion, under the belief that we have no free will, does at least matter in the sense that it is a part of the set of influences upon us that shape who are and contribute to our choices. And, depending on what you mean by "could stop," you certainly could. If you wanted to, you could get up and leave, the only question is whether you will decide to, which is itself based on such features as who you are.

@AhhhTheFrench, you bring up causal influences upon choices to argue that this absolves one of responsibility for one's choices. I do not see any reason to think that that is the case. You were still the person who made those choices, which reflects on one's character, etc. It seems entirely reasonable to cast blame on someone for acting badly, according to their own character. That their own character was shaped by other factors is irrelevant. That doesn't make them better.

Actions will still have reactions even if they were unavoidable. We still need to lock up dangerous people and encourage healthy lifestyles. We should still punish the evil and reward the good. It was just always going to turn out the way that it does.

Once again, only if you discount free will/individual choices/agency/whatever you want to call it. You're assuming that the same person in the exact same circumstances would always make the exact same choice.

Other than quantum mechanical shenanigans this seems like a settled fact of existence?

Seeing as it's been an open dispute in philosophy for at least 2,500 years I'd say no?

They always will, as long as it was at the exact same point in time and all other factors were exactly the same, because that is what happend.

I agree with you, and not with him, but you're not addressing his claims at all.

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If I was them I would be them and not me. I cannot think of a meaningful sense in which you could say "If you were them".

I'm sympathetic to the idea that environmental or genetic factors may make it more or less difficult to not make choices that will give you a chronic disease. That would change the level of responsibility, but unless someone held a gun to your head you've still got some responsibility.

There but for the grace of God, go I.

If you were born with the same genetics and raised by the same family and had the same exact life and experience you would be in the exact same place as them, because you would be them.

Yes, if I was them I would be them.

And the same things would happen to you. We have the data, it happened. If you were them you would be in the exact same situation. They can't have made other choices, or they would have.

If I was them I wouldn’t be me, as you’ve said, so it’s a pointless statement to say “if you were them”. It’s like sayin “If X was Y, then X would be Y.” Which is tautologically true, but provides us with no new information. If I was a cat I’d be a cat. If I was Hitler I’d be Hitler. If my aunt had balls, she’d be my uncle.

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The reason for calling it a "chronic disease" is simply instrumental; it allows fat activists to use laws meant to provide accommodations to sufferers of disease to get accommodations for fat people also.

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