Devil's Food

America's Bible Belt doesn't only lead the nation in church attendance; it also boasts the highest incidence of strokes, diabetes and obesity. (1) Nor has it escaped the attention of paradox-collectors that this contiguous clump of Southern states, a region that that leads the nation in religious worship and political conservatism, an electorate whose chosen spokespeople are prone to bloviate on the value of fetal life and the sanctity of heterosexual marriage, also leads the rest of the country---notably the agnostic, liberal Northeast---in infant mortality, divorce (2), domestic homicide, sexually transmitted diseases (including HIV/AIDS) (3) and murder. (4)

I can't tell you how sinfully gratifying I find these data. Well, I just did tell you, because I cannot lie; but I'm embarrassed by my meanness. It's not that I don't care about the ruined lives that generate these numbers; if I met an overweight, diabetic stroke victim suffering from a broken marriage, the death of an infant and the loss of a loved one to a syphilitic killer I would be moved to tears and would want to help. It's just that, as an agnostic member of the Yankee media elite, a group often generically denounced by Dixie's faithful, I am pleased how nicely the stats seem to damn those who revile me. (In my petty meanness I am bypassing all those who don't revile me but suffer anyway ----one of more disgusting hypocrisies of the Yankee media elite, though we hardly hold a monopoly on it.)

So tempting is it to blame biblical literalism for the Bible Belt's defects, that I have found a way to do it, which I will share presently. But being something of a science fan I am also obliged to consider that church, or God, or fundamentalism may be the enabler rather than the prime mover behind physical decay and moral perversion in the Bible-thumping states. The truly satanic force may be something less grandiose; fish fingers, say, or chicken nuggets.

We have all been warned by now that the typical Southern church-goer's diet of fast food supplemented with frequent church-sponsored feasts featuring home-cooked fluffy biscuits, fried fish, fried chicken, fried steak, fries, and voluminous sugary pies, not to mention mountains of potatoes smothered in white gravy and macaroni larded with mayonnaise---is a diet upon which no loving god can smile.

But can popcorn shrimp or an extra helping of shoo-fly pie explain a region's inclination towards violence---spousal abuse, child abuse, murder and the like? Oddly, to some extent it might, because there is increasing evidence that Bible Belt Diet mortifies more than the flesh. For example, two double-blind studies of prison populations so far have shown a strong correlation between nutritional deficiencies, particularly of Omega-3, and violent behavior. (5, A&B)

In the original study led by Bernard Gesch, the prison officials ---who didn't know who among the young offenders was getting a pill containing vitamins-plus-Omega-3s and who was getting a placebo---consistently reported over 30% fewer incidents of violent behavior from the nutritional supplement takers. That doesn't mean that each individual was a third less violent; but in a group of violence-prone juveniles chosen otherwise at random, some or all of the group getting adequate nutrition were able to tune their craziness down enough to change the social climate of the institution significantly.

So far no one can explain the nature of the statistical synchronicity between proper nutrition and reduced violence. In a later test that sought to reproduce Gesch's results, the prisoners' impulsivity and anger did not noticeably drop when their nutrition was improved, but the number of violent acts did---and roughly as much. So maybe the sort of impulsive acts that transmit STDs won't be affected by by normalizing a population's vitamin and nutrient intake. For that sort of harmful behavior, you might want to look to the fundamentalist aversion to fact-based sex education and the South's way of styling relations between bulls and belles.

Still, the possible implication of vitamin and Omega-3 deficiencies in even a fraction of the Bible Belt's violent pathologies is interesting to consider. Last February CBS mused aloud: "Fried Fish to Blame for Southern 'Stroke Belt'"? Network reporters cited a study published in the journal, Neurology, (6) that found:

"... that along with a higher consumption of fried fish, people living in the stroke belt are less likely to have an adequate intake of non-fried fish, defined in the study as two or more servings of non-fried fish per week based on guidelines from the American Heart Association." (7)

Because the Omega-6s in seed oils, like corn, safflower, etc. tend to replace or nullify the Omega-3s in, say, fish, fried fish eaters don't get the Omega-3s from eating fish that poachers and broilers do. Science cites Gesch, claiming that Omega-3 deficiency has been tied to "Impaired attention...reduced memory, impaired cognition, depression, and excess inflammation."

So when some young man on personal speaking terms with his Lord beats his spouse or shoots a rival, he might have a case if he blames his evil ways on deep-fried catfish, though admittedly he'd need a very good lawyer to make the alibi stick.

Whether or not the social costs of the Bible Belt Diet are as dire as the medical ones, several synergistic factors make the church supper habit particularly difficult to kick, none of which can be blamed on ham, grits and chips.

----- Church complicity. Most southern churches have been inactive when it comes to fighting the obesity epidemic sweeping their congregations. This sinful neglect of congregants' health may not be consciously motivated, but in institutions that frown on smoking, drinking, recreational sex and party drugs---bans that generally lengthen the lives of those that observe them---comfort food and the fellowship of communal feasting act as both lures and rewards. God may be great, but a church picnic's potato salad is worth leaving the house for. (8)

If Christian pro-life values falter when it comes to encouraging life-shortening obesity, Christian decency is double-edged in this department as well. According to Karen Hye-cheon Kim at Cornell's Division of Nutrituion, religious people for the most part are more forgiving (and self-forgiving) than others of physical deformities, including excess weight. Sadly, such tolerance can be as indulgently enabling for gluttons as it is justly forgiving of genetically heavy people. (9)

Community---one of the church's great boons---has yet another demonic side if curbing obesity is your goal. Body weight ---fat or thin---has been shown to be "contagious" between friends and acquaintances, even across distances. One common explanation for this is that the more "normal" obesity appears to people, the more inclined towards it they will be. Others contest this, speculating that people who eat together imitate companionable behavior---like bringing rich, super-pleasing food to a potluck or taking second helpings. (10)

As churchgoers get heavier, in either case, other church goers will tend to get heavier, too.

-----Biblical literalism. Among many Southern Christians a popular world view conflating a highly edited sacred text with their god's eternal views, is also an impediment to easing the region's problems. Worshippers who are encouraged to view scientists as deluded and ungodly might find the admonishments of health professionals less salient. The Bible, alas, does not recommend regular exercise and a diet heavy on greens. Those who view the body as a temple can as easily lavish it with meaty offerings as purify it with green tea and kale.

-----Individualism. Bible Belt churches have long argued, despite much contrary evidence, that people are solely responsible for their individual choices. On this basis conservative Christians denounce as "socialist" government interventions that help people resist obsolete animal hungers. They leave it to individual eaters---including children whose parents may not have the time to fully supervise them---to foil marketing and product ingredients designed to make corporations' products addictive. (11)

-----Traditionalism. While a number of specific aspects of church culture in the Bible Belt are obesity boosters, all religious cultures that place a higher value on generational continuity than on innovation and change are resistant to new behavior, particularly in habits formed young and associated with maternal love, like food preferences and portion perception.

-----Biology. Family predispositions to obesity aside, a diet high in the holy trinity of mammalian gustatory magnets--- sugar, salt and particularly fat---has been shown to rapidly change the intestinal flora and slow the metabolism, making weight loss for bingers extremely difficult. Since obesity mostly kills people after they have reproduced and passed their mix of microbes onto a new generation, it will tend to persist and expand in any population. (12 A&B & C)

-----Stress. Poverty and intolerance, also big portions of the Bible Belt's happy meal, are known stressors, and junk food is a proven stress reducer. So churchgoers experiencing---or even imagining---racial discrimination in hiring, pay and promotion who are seeking succor from God's love could also be self-medicating with comfort food.

-----Addiction. Like commercial junk food, homespun parish treats are neurologically addictive in much the same way as are hard drugs, like cocaine. Food corporations, like tobacco companies, profit from addicting customers to easily available, pre-masticated hits of tastes that make dopamine neurons fire, and by equating "value" with portion size. If methadrine is "hillbilly heroin," cornbread and Dr. Pepper could be considered Christian coke.

The Bible Belt Diet pretty much guarantees a spike in a population's body mass increase, arterial clogging and blood sugar disorders. So Church suppers, picnics and overall aesthetics, along with Southern culinary traditions and the infamous fast food industry evidently are working in harmony with Southern poverty and cultural traditions to hook a disproportionate number of the church's customers on the Bible Belt Diet, with all its nutritional imbalances and social costs.

But elsewhere, overall, religiously observant people of all denominations have higher rates of obesity than non-believers, though the reasons for this persistent correlation are currently as speculative as the nature of god itself. But given the state of the nation's economy, health bills and waistline, we might consider removing the tax exemption religious groups now enjoy---at least until their considerable---and potentially constructive---spiritual power is brought to bear on curbing their costly material excess.

--------------------- NOTES ------------------------

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(1) Data from the diabetes belt showed prevalence rates greater than 11.0% or higher. By comparing demographics ... they found four factors that distinguished the diabetes belt from the rest of the country.

... more non-Hispanic African Americans . (23.8% for the diabetes belt, 8.6% for the rest of the country).

Obesity (32.9% vs. 26.1%) ...in the rest of the U.S.

Sedentary lifestyle (30.6% vs. 24.8%) in the rest of the U.S.

Proportion of people with a college degree was smaller (24.1% vs. 34.3%).

...This belt includes portions of the states of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and West Virginia, as well as the entire state of Mississippi.

"Geographic Distribution of Diagnosed Diabetes in the U.S.: A Diabetes Belt" by Lawrence E. Barker, PhD, et. al. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, Volume 40, Issue 4 (April 2011) doi: 10.1016/j.amepre.2010.12.019.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-03/ehs-dbi030211.php

(2) Barna report: Variation in divorce rates among Christian faith groups:

Denomination % Divorced

Non-denominational ** 34%

Baptists 29%

Mainline Protestants 25%

Mormons 24%

Catholics 21%

Lutherans 21%

** Barna uses the term "non-denominational" to refer to Evangelical Christian congregations that are not affiliated with a specific denomination. The vast majority are fundamentalist in their theological beliefs

Religion % have been divorced

Jews 30%

Born-again Christians 27%

Other Christians 24%

Atheists, Agnostics 21%

Area % are or have been divorced

South 27%

Midwest 27%

West 26%

Northeast 19%

http://www.religioustolerance.org/chr_dira.htm

See also:

CBS Feb 22, 2011 - "Yet the states in the Bible-belt have the highest infant mortality rate in the country, three time higher than the infant mortality rate of ..."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/02/22/health/webmd/main7181156.shtml

(3) A "perfect storm" of social and environmental conditions make the South ground zero for the domestic HIV/AIDS epidemic. The Southeast region of the U.S. has the most poverty, the weakest safety net programs, the most uninsured people, the most prisoners, the fewest needle exchange programs, and the least HIV/AIDS funding and abstinence-based sex education, according to a Human Rights Watch report released Wednesday.

Lisa Biagiotti is an independent journalist currently producing a documentary on HIV in the Deep South, with support from the MAC AIDS Fund.

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/voices/aids-and-bible-belt/5465/

(4) Louisiana has the highest churchgoing rate in the country, but its murder rate is more than twice the national average. The same pattern generally holds in the rest of the South. Tom DeLay's Bible-toting state of Texas has a murder rate triple that of Massachusetts, which is "ungodly" enough to have elected two openly gay members of Congress. New York, the very symbol of godless depravity, is perfectly average when it comes to extralegal slaughter. In Washington state, where Sunday morning slugabeds are more common than anywhere else in America, murder is 38 percent less common.

http://www.slate.com/id/31364/

(5) Science 25 September 2009:
Vol. 325 no. 5948 pp. 1614-1616
DOI: 10.1126/science.325_1614

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5948/1614.full

http://bjp.rcpsych.org/cgi/content/full/181/1/22

SOURCE: ADAPTED FROM INFORMATION PROVIDED BY BERNARD GESCH AND JOHN STEIN

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/325/5948/1614/F4.expansion.html

(5b) Diet and Violence

Does diet affect our criminal behavior?

Published on May 2, 2011 by Emily Deans, M.D. in Evolutionary Psychiatry

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201105/diet-and-violence

(6) Over the last century most western countries have undergone a dramatic shift in the composition of their diets in which the omega-3 fatty acids that are essential to the brain have been flooded out by competing omega-6 fatty acids, mainly from industrial oils such as soya, corn, and sunflower. ...Americans have gone from eating a fraction of an ounce of soya oil a year to downing 25lbs (11.3kg) per person per year (between 1909 and the present era ---LP).

...Communication between the nerve cells depends on neurotransmitters, such as serotonin and dopamine, docking with receptors in the nerve cell membrane. ...If the wrong fatty acids are incorporated into the membrane, the neurotransmitters can't dock properly.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/oct/17/prisonsandprobation.ukcrime

(7) News Release: Research , School of Medicine, Emory University Dec. 22, 2010

Eating Fried Fish Likely Factor in Strokes, Study Finds

Fadi Nahab of Emory University in Atlanta.

The study is published online today (Dec. 22) in the journal Neurology: "The stroke belt includes Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee, as previous studies have shown people living in this region are more likely to die from a stroke than people living in other parts of the United States. Blacks are more affected than whites."

http://shared.web.emory.edu/whsc/news/releases/2010/12/eating-fried-fish-likely-factor-in-strokes-study-finds.html

(8) "For years, the church has focused on the 'don'ts' - don't smoke, don't drink, and all the other things that you shouldn't do that are heavily enforced," said BYU professor Steve Aldana in 2006 about the study on Mormons. "And now finally here's a 'do' - go ahead and do eat - and boy, do we eat."

"We don't know why frequent religious participation is associated with development of obesity," Matthew Feinstein told Northwestern University's News Center. Feinstein is 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."

In the 1998 Purdue study, Sociology Professor Kenneth Ferraro said, "The religious lifestyle has long been considered a healthy one, with its constraints on sexual promiscuity, alcohol and tobacco use. ... However, overeating may be one sin that pastors and priests regularly overlook. And as such, many firm believers may have not-so-firm bodies." http://www.feinberg.northwestern.edu/news/2011J-March/Religion_Obesity.html

(9) Forgiveness isn't the only thing religion preaches. Religious faith also promotes acceptance of one's body. A Cornell University study finds that religious adherents are less likely to perceive themselves as overweight. Jewish women are the exception: They are more likely to overestimate their body weight and pass on the matzo balls.http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200705/in-brief-inaction-cheating

Karen Hye-cheon Kim Cornell University, Division of Nutritional Sciences, 351A Martha Van Hall, Ithaca NY 14853, USA Received 27 September 2005; received in revised form 17 February 2006; accepted 14 March 2006 http://www.midus.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/816.pdf

(10) ...a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health suggests that obesity spreads socially not because friends have shared ideas about acceptable body size, but rather because they share environments and carry out activities together that may contribute to weight gain.

In other words, shared social behaviors, such as eating out at restaurants, and shared surroundings, likely play a bigger role in the obesity "friend effect" than do shared social norms.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joanna-dolgoff-md/weight-gain-contagious_b_862762.html

(11) Ironically, some religious people are opposed to the federal government's efforts to reduce childhood obesity. The RNS article about Michelle Obama reported that, according to a Pew Research Center survey, 56 percent of white evangelicals said the government should not play a significant role in reducing childhood obesity compared to 57 percent of Americans in general who favored such action.

http://www.deseretnews.com/mobile/article/700124603/Study-finds-link-between-religion-obesity.html

(12 A) A high-fat diet may also modulate plasma LPS levels and inflammation through changes in the gut microbiota.....etc.... At this time, the effect of energy intake and diabetes on the gut microbiota is not known in humans, but based on the results in mice, it is likely that a dysbiosis exists under these conditions. http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/714569_3

(12 B) ...Importantly, Gewirtz and his team found that transfer of the intestinal bacteria from TLR5-deficient mice to regular mice transferred many of the characteristics of metabolic syndrome including increased appetite, obesity, elevated blood sugar, and insulin resistance.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/03/100304142232.htm

(12 C) Babies are born bacteria-free but start to pick up bacteria during and after birth. Infants mostly collect bacteria from their mothers and others around them; in a sense, the gut community is inherited from family members. If the gut-obesity theory proved correct, that would suggest obesity risk could be passed along with them.... "If a person has changes in their gut bacteria - and that could be due to anything, to diet, to antibiotic use - if that person has kids, then they can transfer those gut bacteria and maybe transfer the problem," Gewirtz says.

http://articles.latimes.com/2010/jun/21/health/la-he-in-the-works-20100621

(13) See my previous post on sugar and fat addiction: