Is Your Faith Making You Fat?

1:16 AM, Apr 5, 2011

Brigida Mack 

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (WBTV) -- Could your faith make you more prone to obesity? Does participating in weekly church activities make you fat? That's the premise of one recent study.

Researchers at Northwestern University studied 2, 433 people ages 20 to 32 over a period of 18 years.

All of the participants started at a normal weight and the study concluded "people with a high frequency of religious participation in young adulthood were 50% more likely to become obese by middle age than those with no religious participation in young adulthood."

But Dr. Russ Dean, co-pastor of Park Road Baptist Church in south Charlotte, isn't buying it.

I think it's kind of crazy," he said. "I'm kind of offended by the notion that people who go to church get fat."

The study looked specifically at church activities which, let's face it, often involved food.  We're talking pot lucks, bake sales and barbecues.

But even with the regular weekly meal, Dr. Dean says the study's finding are a stretch.

"We serve a Wednesday night meal," he pointed out. "You're here once a week. We do maybe five pot lucks a year. So you eat pot luck five times a year and you're telling me that's going to make you overweight."

Carroll Lane, a long-time Southern Baptist agrees.

"I know that being a southern Baptist we like to eat a lot ... I don't think there's anymore obese people in the church then not. I think it's just like a problem with our whole society."

More important than what his congregation is eating, Dr. Dean said, is the work they're doing.

"You ought to talk as much about the activity that we do and the places our people they go and what they do and where they're helping," he said. "The calories they're expending doing all the mission we do."

While obesity appears to be an issue for religious people according to this study, previous studies have shown that the faithful tend to live longer, be less likely to smoke, and to have better mental health status.

 

LINK TO VIDEO:

http://www.digtriad.com/video/default.aspx?bctid=886553095001