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Researchers from the Northwestern University noticed there's something strange about religion: it's making people fatter.
We don't recall any of the commandments saying "thou shall eat chocolate cake," but an unusual new study has found that people who regularly attend religious activities are 50 percent more likely to battle obesity by middle age.
God only knows why. The scientists sure don't.
"We don't know why frequent religious participation is associated with development of obesity," said Matthew Feinstein, the study's lead investigator and a fourth-year student at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. "It's possible that getting together once a week and associating good works and happiness with eating unhealthy foods could lead to the development of habits that are associated with greater body weight and obesity."
The study tracked nearly 2,500 men and women over 18 years. They filtered for age, race, sex, education, income and baseline body mass index. The last one's important, because it shows that the religious were getting fatter, not that fat people were getting religious.
See also: Dear Lord, If You Can't Make Me Skinny, Please Make My Friends Fat!
So give me a Hallelujah Twinkies, Amen.
They do in my part of the American South, anyway.
My experiences are limited to Christianity and a few dalliances at two UU congregations and a Unity church.
I've attended Catholic mass a few times, and they didn't seem nearly as big on the "meet, greet, and eat" after service. Sure, there was the occasional summertime fish fry, but for the most part they didn't use their place of worship as a "gather & eat" sort of facility.
Meanwhile, most Protestant churches have after-service coffee & treats, potlucks, picnics, and other assorted opportunities for bringing, cooking & eating food.
I would say it's not the belief that results in an increase in obesity; it's the communities and the social eating each community engages in.
Sounds like the researchers at Northwestern need to re-examine what they're examining before they start stating they've found a correlation.
Maybe attribution theory plays a role. If a person sees maintaining or losing weight as their responsibility, they may be more likely to do something about it than a person who prays to god to help them to lose weight.
Plus it says religion as if the reader is supposed to know...so im guessing its alluding to westernised catholosism. Im a stark athiest, just incase you get the wrong idea, yet i find this artical/study beige in texture and pointless.
Also, color me not surprised at snarky atheist comments on the internet, at all. I thought plugging everything into one interpretative framework was supposed to be what religious people did?
It very rarely relates to anagogical spiritual practices which are the root of religion world-wide.
It bothers me that CBS doesn't post the name of the research(ers). I have to read the actual paper on stuff like this, I don't trust media to interpret it for me.