On Blacks and Fat: Dr. Gayle Porter

Poverty and food deserts aren't to blame for our weight problems, the head of a health center says.




For the eighth in the series, The Root talked to Dr. Gayle Porter. A clinical psychologist by training, she's the author of Prime Time: The African-American Woman's Complete Guide to Midlife Health and Wellness and, along with Dr. Marilyn Hughes Gaston, she founded the Gaston & Porter Health Improvement Center. Operating in four states and Washington, D.C., its mission is to improve the health outcomes of African-American women and reduce health disparities. She talked to us about why she refuses to accept poverty as an excuse for African-American obesity, her problem with the food served in black churches and the difference a 30-minute daily walk can make.



Gayle Porter: I want to underline that we are the only group that is more obese than we are overweight. We have larger rates of obesity and smaller rates of people being overweight. I think this is due to several factors. First, we are the most sedentary group. African-American women exercise less than any other group of women in the country. Second, it's our nutrition: We eat more foods, we consume more sugar in our foods and we're more apt to eat Southern-style cooking, which is often laden with fats and with sugar. We also eat a lot of fried foods. Finally, our levels of stress are high, so we do a lot of emotional eating. When you have that combination of high levels of fats, low levels of physical activity and diets that are full of sugar and fats, you're going to get obesity.


GP: There are several. One of the biggest ones is this: Traditionally we think that a major reason people are overweight or obese is because they don't have access to good food -- because they're living in a food desert, for example. Now, that's true for some people, but what our data shows is that that even women who are living in areas with numerous choices in terms of stores where they can buy food still wind up buying unhealthy food. So it's a myth that the reason more of our people are obese it that they're poor and don’t have access.

We published a paper on this called "Paradoxes in Obesity in Mid-Life African American Women." It explains that our middle-class women are as obese as our poor women. We are the only group of women where money and education are not a protective factor against obesity. That is a major scary fact.

Another myth is that our stress levels are lower for our wealthier women. What we find is just the opposite -- and we have data on over 2000 women in midlife. We've found that wealthier women do just as much emotional eating as women who have less money.


