Blaming ignorance for fatness

After one too many "poor people are fatter because they eat shit and do nothin", but it's not their fault they're so degenerate, nutritional ignorance, blah, bleh. I googled around and happened upon this via BfB.

What this neat little study gives voice to is what I've repeatedly tried and seemingly failed to get across, if poor people are fatter-and here they are compared to the richest- the idea that it is because of the food they eat and their lack of gym membership is hardly convincing to me.

Any denizen of the f'os might spot the flaw in that hypothesis, especially if they are capable of removing their classist goggles for a sec. How can a movement advance that fat people eat the same variety of foods as anyone else yet blithely claim poor people eat badly? That would mean they'd all be fat then wouldn't it?

Oh I know, hypocrisy/a deep and abiding belief in the intrinsic degeneracy of the proletariat.

It's easy to blame obesity on poor diet and lack of exercise. But this is overly simplistic, like blaming high unemployment on the number of people watching afternoon television. It doesn't explain underlying causes.

That's right. What lends poorness to fatness is the capacity to open up the body's defenses, to press upon the need for them.  The stresses that play upon the mind and body of a person due to that low income. The make do and mend, the things never quite fit, never quite right for you. To an extent a trigger for ingenuity, but the rate and variety of direction that they seem to come at you means eventually lack is just plain old lack. Something has to give.

....deeper roots of the obesity problem lie at the crossroads between social status and biology.

Yeah, it's so hard for us to believe that this body and this mind, works on a chemical basis. Its switches are electrical impulses and hormones, substances. It's a living reactive machine, all parts thinking and reacting, affected by our environment.

We can't seem to stop treating it as if it's some inviolate thing that has imbalances and rogue chemicals running around, oh really, but that's also how it works. Poor people run around doing their many jobs, long hours low remunerated work. See them cleaning and tidying up, serving others, fat and plump more than adequately represented among their number. But don't take my word for it, go and see for yourself.