Health researchers realize Asians ‘not’ a homogenous group

The Chronicle ran an interesting story on the failure of racial classifications when discussing health disparities in Asian communities.

Poor May Face Greatest Health Burden. Anyone surprised?

Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health recently published a study in the American Journal of Public Health that suggested that poverty and dropout rates may be equally important as smoking in determining health disparities.

I guess I should be glad that Columbia is doing this research. So that now we can say with the backing of academia what we’ve known and said all along and that James Baldwin put so simply, “it’s extremely expensive to be poor.” Columbia researchers suggested that in light of these findings public health policy “redouble its efforts on non-medical factors, such as high school graduation and poverty reduction programs.” Poverty reduction programs? What do you call that in a capitalist system? Oh yeah, socialism.

Lincoln U’s Too Fat to Graduate Policy

I went back and forth on how or if at all to write about this story. And in my moment of hesitation, the controversial policy was reversed, well amended. But there are still important questions this debacle brings up. The backstory: This fall, Lincoln University, a historically Black institution in Pennsylvania announced the enactment of a new policy designed to combat the “obesity epidemic” prevalent in younger people, particularly black. The school would routinely check and monitor the body mass index (BMI) of students.  Those with a BMI above 30, considered outside the “normal” range, would be required to take a course entitled, “Fitness for Life” where they would exercise, learn healthy eating habits, and ultimately bring their BMI below 30. If they failed to attend the class or successfully lower their BMI they would be prevented from graduating. The uproar around this policy, as expected, was loud and national. The school recently announced that they would no longer be requiring the class for graduation, but it would still be offered and strongly recommended to some students.

Though badly executed and strategically problematic, I don’t think Lincoln’s intentions were as wrong as they were misguided. To fully understand this issue you have to go deeper to the role of colleges and universities in black communities and the very real health crises experienced by marginalized communities.

First off, I think it’s safe to say that any strategy preventing otherwise eligible Black students from graduating college is a really bad strategy.

There Are No Words…

I don’t even know if I should post this, but I guess the 365 Black campaign is working. Who needs greens and yams when we have…McDonalds?

Body Awareness and Historical Trauma

There’s some good work happening in the psychology and health worlds around this idea of ‘embodied eating’. This work explores how our consumer culture has deadened our “body sense” or body awareness. As we become more alienated from our bodies natural responses questions like “Am I full?” ” Does this give me energy?” “Does this make me tired?” “Am I even hungry?” become harder for Americans and people living in industrialized nations to answer. What, when, and how we eat are increasingly the results of effective marketing, perceived convenience, and even societal norms about appearance and less so about how our bodies actually feel and how they respond to the food we intake.

Alan Fogel, a Psych Prof. at U of Utah does a lot of work on body sense and embodiment wrote an article in Psychology Today discussing the effects of this kind of alienation on how we eat.

“Either filling up with too much food or entering a state of semi-starvation create changes in the peripheral receptors of the homeostatic body systems that lead to particular states such as feeling soporific or energizing, depressive or anxious. Clinical case reports reveal that these states actually suppress the body sense, the underlying feelings of loneliness, loss, and trauma from which the food or starvation “high” becomes a palliative.”

Leads one to wonder particularly how historical trauma and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder shared by communities can manifest itself in harmful and disembodied eating habits.

Weight Training The Right Way

I have some shame around the fact that I weight train. It’s a dirty secret that I don’t usually share until I’m sure the person has already decided to like me. Most of the shame stems from my own unresolved issues about the culture and people’s assumptions about weight trainers, bodybuilders or folks who use the gym as their primary source of exercise. The common perceptions being that weight training is pretty vain, potentially dangerous and more than a little stupid. When I do get around to confessing, I usually come across a couple of responses: Either I’m prompted to prove my strength by performing  some kind of feat (flexing or lifting something or someone) and/or I have to justify finding value and enjoyment in something so counter to ‘natural’ human activities. I have to say that while bench presses or stationary rows don’t directly correspond to ‘natural world’ activities, neither really does blogging or staring at a screen for 8 hours a day. Yet these are the conditions of our daily lives. And that argument aside, there are quite a few health reasons, both physical and emotional why weight training is pretty damn cool.

1. Accident Insurance – For one, weight lifting or strength training can decrease likelihood of accidents. Think about a fall. If you’re able to catch yourself, it’s less likely you’ll take the spill that’ll break your arm or worse.

2. Endurance – When you’re stronger you can go farther and faster. That simple.

3. Coordination and Balance – We have muscles for a reason. They help us function and move. When you train your muscles to be stronger you can do that better.

4. Bone density - Incredibly important in female bodied persons. As people get older their bones can lose density leading to osteoporosis. Post-menopausal levels of estrogen can quicken this process. It’s a bad thing. Weight training at all ages helps strengthen your bones and keeps you up and healthy longer.

5. Diabetes - Some studies connect weight lifting to a decrease in chances for diabetes. Poor communities and communities of color are significantly more susceptible to diabetes, namely because of the inaccessibility of good food resources and adequate healthcare.  Weight training can be one personal step in countering health issues associated with surviving poor in this country.

6. Embodiment -This should probably be number one as it can apply to all exercise and is really the most important. This is really about centering our consciousness in our bodies as opposed to solely in our minds, stress, and fears. This is a pretty difficult space to occupy, but sometimes the first step is doing something beneficial with our bodies that force us to be present, hence weight training. And as we start to change our relationship to our bodies, we have more energy to change our relationships to our lives and communities.

7. Revolution – Just saying, you never know what it’s going to take.

Also, I like this site for resources on weight lifting and nutrition that aren’t hyper-masculine, sexist or sizeist.

Karl Marx and Healthcare

Yuna Shin wrote an interesting article over at the Huffington Post about alienation, Marx, and healthcare. Nice to see some analysis around capitalism and health, particularly how worker alienation has allowed healthcare to be commodified. Check it out.

McDonald’s Not So Healthy Roots

McDonald's can make you this happy?

Like most, I boast a certain critical, literate eye for advertising—or, at the very least, it’s hard to surprise me. It’s rare that I find myself shocked at the depths corporations will go to appeal to our lowest common denominators and our collective fears, and to co-opt our cultural aspirations. McDonald’s recently unveiled a promotional project, much more targeted and explicit than your run-of-the mill ad campaign. 365Black is McDonald’s push to further embed itself in the Black community (as if multiple franchises in every ’hood were not enough). With the trademarked phrase, “deeply rooted in the community,” McDonald’s has partnered with so-called Black cultural institutions, such as Essence, BET, and Vibe to create “job and scholarship opportunities” in exchange, one can assume, for deeper access to our demographic and a concerted effort to shift its image in our community. 365Black’s promotional pieces are peppered with several Black upper-level McDonald’s execs touting the corporation’s “diversity goals” and community initiatives. Targeted commercials have been designed especially for 365Black—one of which features young black professional types opting for McDonald’s McSkillet burritos over a home-cooked meal (though as of this posting, that ad isn’t up anymore).

Perhaps it should be noted here that heart disease remains the number-one killer of Black people. Or that Black communities disproportionately suffer from diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension, and the rest. Recent and emerging scholarship is beginning to connect the dots between fast food consumption in Black communities, the lack of healthy food options, and these discouraging health statistics. Community leaders and food activists emerging from social justice sectors are making strong inroads in addressing these conditions: from developing innovative mobile groceries and cultivating community gardens, to reinventing cultural foods with an eye for health and cost. A hopeful push out of this health mess is happening and no doubt has Mickey D’s feeling a slip on their hold over the Black community, a community they’ve likely taken somewhat for granted.

Racial and culturally focused advertising is not a new phenomenon. Proctor and Gamble launched their “My Black Is Beautiful” campaign in 2007 to, in their words, “celebrate the beauty of every African-American woman” and in my words, to promote cosmetics.  And though McDonald’s isn’t doing anything unheard of in a marketing sense, the health implications to the Black community are dangerous. Cultural and corporate lines are being intentionally blurred for deeper entrenchment, the least of the concerns the actual health of Black communities. Knowing that some will hype the funneling of funds into job and scholarship programs, it invites the question: Is it enough for our communities to receive a proverbial piece of the McDonald’s philanthropic pie at the expense of our collective and individual health? I think not.

This was originally posted on the blog for ‘Cook Food,’ vegan cookbook/manualfesto by Lisa Jervis. You can buy it here!