A Prayer of Faith

My favorite Valentine’s Day gift was the flury of publicity around a study suggesting Mormons are pigs.

A BYU professor who looked at data from the Utah Health Status Survey found that members of the Church weigh, on average, 4.6 pounds more than other Utahns.

The bias of this study, of course, is that weighing five pounds more than your neighbor means you’re portly.

It ignores a wealth of other possibilities, which (Thank you, Elder David R. Stone, my new favorite General Authority, for your brilliant conference talk on susceptibility to Zeitgeist) were we not so obsessed with body image, might have occurred to reporters.

Before we list those possibilities, note the results of a newly released study out of Israel which has the same findings about the weight of religiously devout people, but casts those findings in an entirely different light.

Study: Religious Girls More Comfortable With Their Bodies
As long as a young girl is religious, the likelihood that she will have an eating disorder is lower, asserts Prof. Yael Latzer of the School of Social Work at the University of Haifa. 
In a unique, first of its kind study, Latzer looks at the connection between levels of religiosity, self-esteem, self-image, and eating disorders.

The study findings showed that as long as the level of religiosity is unified and high, the desire to be thin is lower. On the positive side, self-esteem and body image are higher, as is the extent of satisfaction with one’s body. The result, the researcher states, is that there is less preoccupation with food and weight.

Contrast that with the way the BYU study was reported:

BYU study finds Mormons weigh more
Eating may substitute for other forbidden indulgences
OREM, Utah - Mormons on average weigh 4.6 pounds more than other Utahans, a study by a Brigham Young University professor concluded. The study also found that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were 14 percent more likely than nonmembers to be obese. That was 18 percent for men, and 9 percent for women.

The study was made by BYU health science professor Ray Merrill from data obtained in 1996, 2001 and 2003-2004 by the Utah Health Status Survey.

The most recent numbers, while still high, showed there has been some improvement since 1996, when Mormon adults were found to be 5.7 pounds heavier on average and 34 percent more likely to be obese.

Merrill’s study suggests Mormons may be using excessive eating as a substitute for prohibited indulgences such as smoking and drinking.

Let us then look at some reasons Latter-day Saints might weigh, on average, 4.6 pounds more than other Utahns:

1. We eat healthier in childhood, and so become taller — and therefore heavier — adults.
2. We are largely descended from big freakin’ Vikings. We are bigger because, in Utah at least, we’re Scandanavians, rather than Hispanics.
3. We live longer. At a pound or two a year, it adds up.
4. Unlike our irreligious counterparts, we don’t tend to be crackheads or coke whores.
5. Unlike our irreligious counterparts, we don’t hang out in vomitoriums for messed-up anorexic girls.
6. When we get pregnant, we actually keep our babies instead of vacuuming them out before they cause stretch marks. 
7. Raising kids seems to us like a higher priority than self-absorption over weight.

So are we heavier? Sure thing! That’s what happens when you’re not a nutcase.

–The Editrix

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 5th, 2006 at 12:46 pm and is filed under Whisperings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.