Circular Reasoning and Obesity

The following theory on the origins of the “obesity epidemic” (seen via Boing Boing) is a bit circular:

A recent paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition argued that the poor tend toward greater obesity because eating energy-dense, highly palatable, refined foods is cheaper per calorie consumed than buying fish and fresh fruits and vegetables.

In other words, the poor are consuming more calories because they're looking for more calories. If they were looking for cheap foods, they would get fresh fruits and vegetables. The assumption is that if a groups of people is doing something, they cannot be blamed.

But wait, there's more:

At the Oldways conference, Foreyt noted that 80 percent of African-American females are overweight, and that Hispanic women were the second-heaviest group. "The last to fatten will be rich white women," he observed.

There's an alternative explanation for the first-mentioned fact from Baldilocks (a black woman with a shaved head):

Nothing cracks me up more that seeing another black woman with hair straightened and weaved to a fair-thee-well, perfect-manicured hands, perfectly-pedicured feet, perfectly made-up (and usually pretty) face and weighing two hundred and fifty pounds. There’s a reason many black women are fat: they’re too afraid of napping up that hair with a little sweat.