What if we’ve been wasting our time all these years?
What if Lady M’s obsession with healthy eating:
And her seemingly endless tireless appearances to promote Let’s Move!
in order to ensure No Child’s Fat Behind!
were all just misguided efforts? What if little black girls grow up to be obese not because of what they eat or what physical exercise they do or don’t do? What if obesity isn’t related to healthy living at all, what if it’s actually caused by…racism?
That’s right; racism. That’s how things are shaping up. You see, ever since Boston University got funding in 2012 to do a study that determined 4 out of 5 black women are overweight they had been frantically seeking additional federal research funding to determine the cause of this calamity. Fortunately they got it (thank you U.S. tax payer!) last year and were able to continue their very important, highly scientific study that has determined that one of the leading causes of obesity in black women is – you guessed it – racism!
That’s right, Boston University’s Slone Epidemiology Center established a statistically significant correlation between obesity and (self-reported) incidents of racism:
The findings, which currently appear online in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found the relationship between racism and obesity was strongest among women who reported consistently high experiences of racism over a 12-year period.
I don’t know how the study defined “racism” butt if it’s anything like how Chris Matthews, Al Sharpton and Rachael Maddow define it, we might want to stop right here and move on to more important news.
Absent that, let me share a few concerns that I have with this well-funded research study:
- Inconvenient truth #1: Epidemiology is not real science. It’s more like guessing.
Epidemiological studies rely on data that is self reported. This can create any number of problems, one being “recall error” which is related to butt not necessarily the same as lying. The corollary of Inconvenient truth #1 is:
- Inconvenient truth #2: Correlation is NOT the same as causation.
For example, just because 4 out of 5 black women are overweight, get their nails manicured and wear wigs, it doesn’t mean that manicures and wigs make them fat. Although with the proper funding I could probably produce a “prospective cohort study” that proves they do. That’s how post normal science works:
According to the "inventors" of PNS, Silvio Funtowicz and Jerome Ravetz, it is supposedly a scientific method of inquiry appropriate for cases where "facts are uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent." What they describe however is more accurately recognized as politics than science, which is precisely the point: In postmodernism, everything is politics.
Butt I digress. Let’s get back to Lady M: now, in addition to promoting healthy eating and exercise, in order to wipe out childhood obesity in one generation she’s going to have to wipe out racism too! Wow. We’re going to need a whole lot of new clothes, and props, in order to pull that off.
So in another historic first, Lady M kicked off a huge cross promotion this week with two of her Big Corporate Let’s Move! partners, Disney and Subway. They will be teaming up to launch Subway’s sure-to-be-a-hit Pile on the Veggies campaign aimed at children and designed to wipe out racism in just one generation, or something.
So thank your lucky stars, kids, that you’ve got plenty of healthy kale chips to eat:
Because right now, somewhere in this country, there’s a black woman who doesn’t have any kale and is being forced to eat Cheetos and potato chips because, RACISM.
Subway’s Pile On The Veggies mascots; cute, butt next time make sure you find a black sheep.
Linked By: @ValCSilver on twitter, and BlogsLucianneLoves, and NOBO2012 on Free Republic, Thanks!
Cross-Posted on Patriot Action Network
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