Fat makes you stupid

Apparently.

Let me explain.

Last night, on the way home from class, there was a discussion on the radio among a set of policy wonks and school-type-peoples discussing childhood obesity and school policies. One women was discussing the finding that the same kids with weight problems have academic problems (and that athletic kids have superior grades). Without missing a beat she went off on how we have to fight this obesity business because of the academic implications.

Really?

You didn't stop to think for a moment that maybe there's a root cause for both of these problems? No. Being fat must make you bad in school.

Now, I understand that the social consequences of overweight and obesity can contribute to flagging academic performance. But this sort of a finding really ought to make us look deeper. There are lots of possibilities.

Maybe the athletic kids have richer parents. We know richer parents leads to better academic performance. We also know poor people tend to have more weight and health problems. Healthy food can be expensive or labor intensive or both--pernicious challenges for those with meager means (and generally high-stress, low-wage jobs).

Athletic kids may also simply have more involved parents, even if they don't make much more than the parents of the nonathletic kids.

Perhaps there's an underlying health problem that affects both weight gain and factors of academic performance, like attention, depression, fatigue... I can think of several without even Googling.

My point is this, though. Something about the connection with academic performance should have triggered something in this woman's brain that says "Wait a minute. Fat doesn't make you stupid! Maybe there's something else going on." but it didn't. What exactly failed here? Is this because we tend to think of fat people as stupid and lazy and greedy and so she simply failed to notice that this reinforced that? Did she simply fail to think? Is she just trapped in assuming being fat as a problem without considering that it might be a symptom?

I tell you, fat may not be making school kids stupid, but it sure seems to make everyone else suspend critical thinking.