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Comment by pseudometa | Hacker News Reader

I get the feeling they could simply interchange income maps for obesity maps and no one would know which is which.

So often these maps turn out to be population-density heatmaps. Do we know that is not the case here?

Ah, thanks nrjames, that page says its percent obesity within each grid cell. So not a population heatmap.

my anecdotal look at the bay area is inline with the grandparent comment, this seems to be basically a poverty map. I'm sure you could find places that has strange discrepancies where obesity and poverty don't directly correlate, but my guess is that in general they do pretty closely.

Poverty may correlate with historical cultural makeup. And culture historically correlates strongly with genes. And genes are largely responsible for obesity. Its complicated to be sure!

Genetics certainly contribute to obesity, but they aren't typically a primary factor, are they? Surely diet, exercise, and lifestyle are far more relevant. These are directly impacted by poverty.

In some population genetics is a strong driver of obesity. Pacific Islanders, Inuit, some Aboriginal America groups come to mind. Any isolated place experiencing periodic famine, supports genes to hoard calories.

Great Falls, in Virginia (west of DC) is surprisingly obese, given it's an EXTREMELY wealthy area (avg home price is >$1 million) and also not racially diverse. Compare it with the nearby Herndon and Reston areas, both of which are very mixed, both economically and racially.

Interestingly, this pattern is the opposite of what you see when comparing NW DC with the rest of the city. NW DC is more white and wealthy, but slimmer. The rest of the city is relatively poorer and more diverse, and also more obese.

Thanks for the specific counterpoint! Definitely makes me want to dive into the data and identify other clusters that are atypical like that.

Not exactly, Flushing in Queens is not obese, but isn't at all a rich neighborhood (assuming blue=good, red=bad, this thing doesn't have a key).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flushing,_Queens

Click the "Info" tab near the top for a key.

It's also full of east asian immigrants, which are less likely to be fat (look up the obesity rate in Korea, for instance - it's almost 0)

I wonder if parental income maps would be an even better match. I've heard that when one is raised as an obese child, the chance of reaching a healthy weight later in life is very slim.

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