OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe, 1 year ago

I mean, race is a thing when it comes to likelihood of certain diseases and handfuls of medications affect some groups differently than others. There are legitimate differences in trends of bone structure/length/shaping. Like, even if you’re not outwardly presenting as being black, like if your family is Hispanic mixed but mostly Hispanic, sickle cell anemia is highly prevalent in the black community and you SHOULD know things like that if only for the doctor to better understand the results and tests

Race, or at least what regions your genetic makeup best adheres to, can be important for dietary changes, as there have been some (I haven’t looked at this in a decade) minor research in regard to whether eating foods similar to genetic ancestors might help that was inconclusive (I think. Mostly, if I remember, they just found some data to suggest people who have medditeranean ancestry benefit from adding fish to their diet, but so does everyone else for the most part).

Skin color matters for things like external medication absorption, varying levels of need for sunlight and vitamin d production. But other than that and the fringe elements above, yeah it’s mostly just a thing because we make it a thing, but we’ve made it a thing for so long it’s seemingly one of our ‘stickiest’ holdovers.