conservatives are mentally ill (fat and obese)

(too)

Obesity is an eating disorder and a mental illness. Obesity correlates with high neuroticism, low conscientiousness, and low intelligence. Although conservatives are generally higher in conscientiousness, they still tend to be more obese. This remains true even when controlling for geography (walkable neighborhoods, car ownership, availability of health foods).

When I say that conservatives are more obese than liberals, I am making this statement in an intra-racial context: conservative whites are more obese than liberal whites. I am talking about whites exclusively in my analysis, because they are the majority in the countries surveyed (America and Europe). If we consider black conservatives, we might find that they are less obese than liberal blacks, although I have not yet seen data to prove this.

Since blacks have a higher rate of obesity, and identify as less conservative, this obscures the ideological effects of conservatism. See my comment and Richard Hanania’s comment in response to this article by Sebjenseb.

obesity is the worst:

According to the International Journal of Gynecology and Obstetrics (2023):

“One BMI point above 30 has been associated with a 2% decrease in income, a 3% increase in social transfer payments, and a 4% increase in healthcare costs.”

Childhood obesity results in precocious puberty, which causes life-long psychological damage, especially for girls.

Whereas “81.4% of women of normal weight” conceive within 12 months of attempting pregnancy, only 66.4% of obese women are able to do so. That means that obesity increased infertility in women by a shocking 80.6%.

Obese women may think they can use IVF to get around infertility, but this is not the case. They are so biologically damaged that current technology is not able to save them:

A report by the National Infertility Group for Scotland, however, does make specific recommendations that women with a BMI over 30 should not be offered fertility treatment. A 2014 survey of Canadian medical directors found that 50% of respondents imposed a BMI cut-off for offering fertility treatments. A study in the USA surveyed 347 clinics that offered IVF services; 120 reported that they employed a weight/BMI cut-off range using a point system as a determining factor for whether or not the couple/woman was eligible for IVF treatment.

Ozempic might be helpful for conservatives, to help alleviate the effects of their poor mental health. By increasing childhood obesity, conservatives are doing damage to America’s healthcare system, its economy, sexual satisfaction, quality of life, and aesthetic value.

There is no mental health crisis in America greater than obesity. When psychologists refuse to label obesity as a mental illness, they neglect and ignore the disproportionate impact of conservatives on fertility, government spending, and mortality. This allows them to fixate on less destructive mental illnesses, like neuroticism, anxiety, and depression.

Despite conservatives freaking out over trans-gender surgery, the vast majority of liberals with neuroticism, anxiety, and depression do not get million dollar surgeries. According to the CDC, obesity costs the country $173 billion dollars every year. Mental illness in general costs $282 billion per year, at least 25% of severely mentally ill people were obese. From the CDC, “Forty-three percent of adults with depression were obese, and adults with depression were more likely to be obese than adults without depression.” These aren’t mutually exclusive problems, but have significant overlap.

Until psychologists are willing to become consistent, logical, and objective in their labeling of mental illness, they will continue to promote a false perception of the dangers of liberalism. Ultimately, this is the fault of liberals, not conservatives. It is liberals who refuse to call obesity a mental illness, since they have labeled obesity a victim class, and they are too scared to “fat-shame.”

obesity is an eating disorder:

5.7% of girls ages 11-19 have eating disorders. The problem with this definition is that it excludes obesity from the category of “eating disorder.” 19.7% of children are obese (2020), and conservative children are more obese. Conservative ideology is much more threatening to the mental and physical health of children than trans-gender surgeries or hormonal therapies.

A 2015 study found that “1% increase in county-level support for the Republican candidate corresponds to a 0.02% increase in age-adjusted obesity rates.”

This is also true in Britain. According to a study from 2024, “Conservative Party voters were more likely to be living with obesity than those who voted Labour” by a factor of 42%.

If we consider childhood obesity as a parent-induced and parent-facilitated eating disorder, then having conservative parents exposes children to a much higher risk of mental illness than liberalism.

Obese children may be predisposed to gain weight as a result of depression, anxiety, or genetic factors. However, these predispositions do not excuse the prevalence of this disease among children. Obesity is one of the very few mental disorders where the harm is completely within the control of the parents. Parents cannot control the thoughts or feelings of their children, but they can control their mouths and stomachs.

If we define obesity as a mental illness, the relationship between liberalism and mental illness disappears. Instead, liberals and conservatives are both mentally ill in different ways. Due to a politically-correct taboo against calling obese people mentally ill, this conservative mental illness epidemic goes undiagnosed and ignored.

The traits which liberals are accused of possessing — neuroticism and low conscientiousness — are the same traits which predict obesity. This implies that liberal culture provides some kind of additional protection against obesity that conservative culture does not possess, or that conservative culture aggravates obesity. Here are four possible explanations:

1. Liberals are more skeptical of corporations and support the regulatory policies of the FDA. This causes them to be more suspicious of fast food.

2. Liberals are more likely to see choosing “healthy food” as a statement of ethical value, while conservatives see “healthy food” as an empty signifier, or even evidence of androgyny. Veganism, for example, is associated with effeminacy in the minds of conservatives.

3. Physical health may be more important to liberals because of their emphasis on the care/harm axis.

4. Kirkegaard claims that liberals are more narcissistic, more Machiavellian, and more hungry for social approval. Perhaps it is these traits which protect liberals from eating fast food and becoming fat slobs.

conservatism causes obesity:

Conservatives prefer to deny, ignore, and repress their problems, while liberals prefer to advertise and express them.

KY, WV, IA, and ND, have low black populations; compare CO, CA, NJ, and MA.

One example of a repressive and isolating emotional strategy is overeating. Conservatives have much higher rates of obesity than liberals. The obesity gap between liberals and conservatives is much greater than generally reported, since most of the data on this does not control for racial gaps in obesity. White conservatives are much more obese than white liberals.

Instead of going to a doctor and asking for help with their mental health, conservatives remain undiagnosed and eat themselves to death. They have lower levels of exercise participation when controlling for race. Obesity isn’t a physical illness, it is a mental illness. By the metric of eating disorders, conservatives are more mentally ill than liberals.

All of the studies which show that “conservatives are healthier than liberals” fail to account for health disparities by race. When race is controlled for, the correlation inverts.

Liberals do have higher levels of anxiety and depression, but are less mentally ill than conservatives in other ways. Conservatives are more obese, which is not a physical problem like a broken leg or blindness, but is a result of habitual choices (such as overeating and eating fast food).