[mfoy_]

That's what they are talking about... the cultural effects. Not the "South vs North" cultural effects, but the socioeconomic ones.

(EDIT: I was wrong, the article is literally only talking about the biological and physiological effects. You make a good point. The cultural impact seems as important, if not more so, than any physiological one.)

For me, this idea is actually quite intuitive. When you don't know where your next meal is going to come from you don't turn down the opportunity to eat. Once you rise out of poverty you can get that opportunity steadily, but your mindset won't change so fast, so you overeat.

It takes a few generations for the hunger to be forgotten, I think.

[kstenerud]

I prefer Occam's Razor. We've already proven that food is one of the largest contributors to heart disease.

Not controlling for this is a HUGE oversight, to the point of invalidating the study.

[mfoy_]

You're saying that the problem is that the Southerners are just eating too much rich food. The article, and I, are saying that that is a symptom of an underlying problem. The underlying problem is the eating habits which are artifacts of growing up in poverty-- Poverty caused by the civil war.

Hence the leap to "Civil War --> Heart disease"

[jacobush]

I think you are missing the point.

[apalmer]

This is explicitly NOT what the article is talking about.

[mfoy_]

Oh wow, on closer inspection you're right. I initially skimmed the article and clearly made some assumptions. It's more focused on the biological and physiological effects of socioeconomic status on fetal development... which is actually pretty interesting.

To be fair, most of the article alludes to those factors and effects in a way indistinguishable from if he had mentioned cultural elements instead. I just assumed that one of the paragraphs I glossed over would have mentioned diet.