From the link:

I'm really interested in knowing how this information was obtained.  No offense to anyone this might apply to, but I've seen more girls' guts hanging over pants in the past five years than ever before.  We are a fatass country.

Well, duh.  A lot of girls are overweight.  More today than twenty years ago.  I'm too lazy to cite this.  Look it up yourself.  It's true. 

I'm extremely skeptical of the 24% in 95 jumping to 90% today.  Were the studies conducted the same way, with the same questions, and same controls?

Fuck the fuck off you fucking fuck.

Ok.  Now I am going to cite statistics.

America:  Obese = 30%

Sweden: Obese = 9%

America: 85-88% religious

Sweden: 85% non-religious

Again, I say "FUCK THE FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING FUCK."

What the fuck?  They have faith in a cult of thinness, so atheism is to blame? What an ignorant twat.

This kind of twaddle deserves nothing less than complete ridicule. 

 http://www.nationmaster.com/red/graph/hea_obe-health-obesity&ob=ws

http://www.gadling.com/2007/08/23/least-religious-countries/

Christians can't get their story straight. John Murray, the son of Madalyn Murray O'Hair who became a christian, blames his mother's obesity on her atheism, even though I see plenty of grossly overweight preachers out there like the late Jerry Falwell and the extant John Hagee. (Vox Day also claims that male "low church atheists," as he calls them, tend to have weight problems.)

Now somebody wants to blame atheism for women's anorexia. Go figure.

Stats are an extremly tricky subject.

First in American culture, Mcdonalds are all around so that could contribute to obesity, also American media is bombarded with super models,  pop stars, so another extreme. 'Eat fatty foods, stay thin!' Complete overload....

Anyway...

So yeah, just another example of somebody fucking up stats.

Simple rule of thumb:

NO CALCULATIONS: NO STATS.

One thing I don't get. Christians are the ones starving themselves,er I mean fasting,but non-religious are the ones with eating problems? I've never seen an atheist not eat for a week for no good reason.Who has the unhealthy eating habits now?

Ah well.You can't hope to win the war and and all the battles right. you certainly wouldn't catch this particualr atheist not eating though. And since I'm pretty much the only atheist I know IRL, I couldn't see a atheist eat or not eat for a week anyway

PS..you mean aliens don't abduct people?!?

How does this establish causality?

They could have it backwards... Maybe fat people flock to religion, because even though they don't fit in with societal standards, god still loves them the way they are. (nevermind the "gluttony is a sin" thing.. )

However, I do think that religious people tend to make an effort not to concern themselves with things that are "of the world" (as an homage to whatever bible verse it was that says to "be in the world, but not of the world." I know that at least at my high school, no matter how many times they told us that in chapel, a certain percentage of students still read US weekly and adhered to current fashion trends.) It could be that because many religious people push themselves away from the influence of society and culture, it may mean that they're not constantly coveting the appearance of others. But just because religion may "prevent" eating disorders doesn't mean the converse is true: that atheism causes eating disorders.

As a recovered anorexic/bulimic, I can tell you that the peak of my religiosity coincided with the peak of my disordered eating. I'm not using this to establish any sort of causality, because faith and non-faith had nothing to do with my relationship with food. I think I used religion as a crutch, because I felt miserable, and I was hoping that there was some divine power that could set things right & help me feel better. Unfortunately, if you want something done, you have to do it yourself.

Anyways, I think the whole article is pointless. They're trying to establish a link where there is none, and are skewing data to see the results they want to see.

As a personal observation, I find that atheist/freethinking women have higher self-esteem ie. comfortable with their bodies, personalities, etc.. Now I may be of course way off on this one but the atheist women I know tend to have a healthy "I couldn't give a fuck what other people think" attitude.

I'd be interested in anorexia stats among atheist versus religious women or if there is a correlation between religiousity and self-esteem.

I looked for some studies. Damn journals requiring a subscribtion, but I found some abstracts:

From This abstract:

I would guess they would put N/A or something to that effect in religiousity/spirtual questions.

Really? And what parts made you think they had a religious bias?

I don't mean to speak for ragdish, but um... you did quote him as saying "They endorse a "spiritual" path to recovery from eating disorders."  Endorsing spirituality would be bias, would it not?

I'm as interested as you in knowing whether or not there's something to the claim of bias.  Did either of you get this information about their endorsements from their own words, or the company website, or what?

Having said that, as data goes, I just don't see how this can really offer any meaningful insight into the original question, which is whether or not a lack of faith causes eating disorders.  This study dealt with how people overcame eating disorders.  I've seen studies where placebos in place of real appetite suppressants had beneficial effects.  I'm not about to say that sugar pills cause eating disorders... duh.

This does not address the question, which is "HEY!  What measure did you use?"  Also, even if N/A is an option, a self-made questionnaire would certainly not meet the standards of unbiased and inclusive if they endorse spirituality in the program itself.  If they didn't use a self-made one, which measure did they use?  Why is it unavailable?

Wow.  I could have just started an argument over whether or not the Cubs will ever win the World Series.  That would at least be interesting and completely irrelevant to the conversation, instead of insipid and irrelevant.

Anyway... the reason I was jumping back into the conversation was because of the question of obesity being an eating disorder.  I think one of the real problems with eating disorders is that they're often misnomers, and in lay conversation, the focus gets lost.  Anorexia/bulemia are not problems with eating.  They're problems with the person's feelings about eating, which are entirely different.  You don't solve eating disorders by regulating food.  You do it by addressing the underlying psychological reasons for the disorder.

Oddly, overeating may not always be a symptom of a problem.  In fact, we have pretty good reasons to believe that our propensity to gorge ourselves was a beneficial evolutionary adaptation.  When you only killed a gazelle every few weeks, it was in your best interest to eat literally as much as your stomach could hold, because you didn't know when you might eat again.  Those extra few bites after being 'full' might be the energy that would get you those extra three steps in the chase a week from now.

Our bodies are not evolved to cope with the availability of candy bars and Cokes.  We're certainly not adapted to three balanced meals a day.  For the vast majority of our time on earth, we've eaten every time we get the chance, whenever that may be.

Long way around my ass to get to my elbow and say, many people with muffin tops don't (IMO) have an eating disorder.  What they have is an industrial disorder.  If the cheap food wasn't so bad for them, and if there wasn't so much of it available, they wouldn't have the baggage.  Those fat girls in every doctors office are suffering from sitting their big asses in chairs for eight hours a day, sitting in the car to drive home, and sitting in front of the TV until laying in bed.

Lest I sound biased against the girth-challenged, I usually lean towards blaming groups for individual faults.  I'm not going to stand in judgment of any particular set of thunder thighs.  People need to work, and unless you want to get up at three in the morning to walk, most people need to drive to work.  It's not any one person's fault that none of their neighbors play badminton in the apartment complex's parking lot.  Working up the individual motivation to eat healthy, exercise regularly AND hold down a 40 hour a week job, ten hours of transit, a family, and a little down time, is very hard.

I'm part of the problem in this.  My restaurant, because it must compete with all the other restaurants, has to serve huge portions.  Our food is damn healthy if you eat a reasonable amount of it, but the food industry, because there are only a limited number of things you can do to compete, literally forces people to decide between finishing their plates, which, every mom will tell you is a virtue, or "not getting their money's worth" by leaving food on the plate.  After all, there are starving people in Africa who would love to have what you leave on the plate!

I was looking for a study that they could have used. Whether that was their ass, or an actual study.

Perhaps she interputed religious people overcoming eating disorders as 'proof' of her assertion. Or she used a different study, or something. I was trying to find the basis for her claim.

If you look at the British abstract, religion is negativly correlated with BMI.

I need to blow the dust off my stats book and come up with topic of how to read stats. All the U.S study shows is that in the U.S people in the program with high religiousity recover faster, and all the British study show is that those who's religiousity is higher had a lower BMI.

It doesn't show religion or lack there of causes or helps treat anorexia, but I thought maybe she used a study like that.

ragdish asked how they could be applied to atheist. I assume that is what they would answer.

I'll give you props for um... hmm... seriously, I think it's admirable that you're actually trying, but I can't think of the name of a virtue to give you props for... 

Out of all the societal ills I think religion is a factor in, this one is way down on my list, so I haven't really done much research, and I haven't worked myself up enough to read any of the abstracts.  All I have is my own observations, which are that I don't recall knowing any fat atheist women who thought they ought to be treated the same as anyone else because their soul was in the right place.  Like so many other things, religion (specifically Christianity) provides an opportunity (whether people take the opportunity is what the stats are for... philosophically, it is certain) for people to slough off personal responsibility for their appearance.  It's not the only way to give up trying to be fit, but it's an easy way.

Oh, and for the record, I forgot to mention another objection to any studies of eating disorder treatment as relevant to this assertion.  The only people surveyed are those who made an effort to solve their problems!  This is a biased sample, and can't tell us anything about the population at large, most of whom never enter into any kind of treatment.