CDC: Americans Getting Heavier, Average Woman Weighs As Much As 1960s Man 409
schwit1 writes: New statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that the average American has packed on the pounds in the past 50 years. Both men and women have gained a considerable amount of weight since 1960, with the average American woman now weighing 166.2 pounds — nearly identical to what American men weighed in the 1960s. U.S. men have been getting bigger too, gaining nearly 30 pounds from the 1960s to 2010 — 166.3 pounds to 195.5 pounds today. The good news is that both sexes have gained almost an inch in height since then, so that accounts for some of the overall weight gain.
Comparing apples to miniature oranges (Score:3, Informative)
It should be noted that the average US male (5'10" vs. 5'8") and female (5'5" vs. 5'3") in 2015 are both two inches taller than their 1960 counterparts. Based on the cube law, you'd expact the average female weight to have increased almost 10% as a result ((65/63)^3 = 1.098).
Increased height accounts for more than half of the weight gain noted in the study.
Re:Comparing apples to miniature oranges (Score:5, Funny)
Point was made but wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
The summary mentioned a height increase but only of an inch and only account for 10% of the gain, not two inches and half of the gain as the person you were responding to noting. If nothing else he was correcting a bad summary.
Re:Point was made but wrong (Score:5, Informative)
If nothing else he was correcting a bad summary.
No he isn't. The summary is correct, and he is wrong. Americans are one inch taller than in 1960, not two inches. In 1960 the average man was 5'8", today he is 5'9". The average women went from 5'3" to 5'4".
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But you are assuming the data from the article is correct, which as the other AC to responded pointed out seems not to be.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_height says the average American male is 5' 9.5"
No, it says the average American male between the ages of 20 and 29 is 5'9.5". Since older people tend to be shorter, the overall average is going to be less.
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I know you didn't read the fucking post you were replying to but the OP pointed out that people have actually increased in height 2 inches, not one as claimed in the summary.
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As others points out already (and someone else even beat me to parroting your own line back at you), he's suggesting it's greater than the summary said and that it accounts for far more than the summary was giving it credit for.
Moreover, in looking through the data for the last 30 minutes, I have yet to figure out where the CBS article is pulling their numbers from, since they linked to a very general page, rather than one with specific details, and the only weight data I can find either doesn't go back tha
Re:Comparing apples to miniature oranges (Score:4, Insightful)
Moreover, in looking through the data for the last 30 minutes, I have yet to figure out where the CBS article is pulling their numbers from, since they linked to a very general page
Because it's great grand fun to call 'murrikkkans fat stupid racist sexist retarded rednecks who cannot do a damn thing right. Even by other 'murricains.
That kinda answers everything. Don't need data for that, Just envy or self loathing.
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And you've got a three in five chance of being right!
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1960 data comes from a 2004 study here:
http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/a... [cdc.gov]
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It All starts with Sodas, but I am not sure where it goes from there.
I have just returned from our community swim meet. Kids drink multiple sodas and get heavy and swim slow.
Kids drink water with the occasional small portion of soda stay lean and swim fast.
My wife and I have observed this for the past 12 years at our community pool with ~400 members. Slim kids drink water mostly, heavy kids always have a Coke in hand. 24, 32, 48 oz behemoths.
Years ago when I went to school there were the couple of Fat Kid
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Yes, but at 385 pounds, you're not getting away with blaming that on an extra inch in height...
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It's not clear to me that the cube law is applicable. The cube law comes into play when all three linear dimensions (height, width, and depth) are changing by the same factor, so you are assuming that a width and depth (or girth) increase proportional to height increase is all healthy weight.
While this may be true it's something that needs to be examined in more detail to see how healthy weight is a function of both girth and height.
Re: Comparing apples to miniature oranges (Score:2)
In the meantime, unless there is study to the contrary, the cubic ratio is the most reasonable assumption to go by, especially around the population mean or median.
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What cube law? Humans are not cubes.
For adult men, a healthy waistline is almost independent of height. And BMI is based on the square of height, as a more accurate model.
Just look at the old family photo albums, if you think people are not a lot fatter now.
Re: Comparing apples to miniature oranges (Score:2)
No need to be cubes, it's sufficient to be in 3D. Also, I don't think it's healthy for a 2m person to have the same girth as a healthy 160cm man who is thin or just right even for his height.
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No idea what the AC is trying to say there, but there is some relevance in the last section 'Biomechanics' and a link to : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Animals, including people, do not scale isometrically, ie no cube law.
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OK, I guess English is not the AC's first language. The question was rhetorical and idiomatic. See the sentence that came after it.
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And the other half is a glandular problem.
Re:Comparing apples to miniature oranges (Score:5, Funny)
Based on the cube law, you'd expact the average female weight to have increased almost 10% as a result ((65/63)^3 = 1.098).
Increased height accounts for more than half of the weight gain noted in the study.
So, you started your analysis by assuming a spherical human?
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bigger tits.
average bra size has increased too.
Re:Comparing apples to miniature oranges (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, they're mainly on men.
Which of course has nothing to do with... (Score:5, Interesting)
the corn subsidies and the silly food pyramid.
We eat too much, we exercise too little, and we eat the wrong things.
More fruits, veg, and yes meat... and less starchy food.
As to getting people to move their fat asses every so often... good luck with that.
My ultimate solution to all this is massive genetic engineering.
First there's no reason we couldn't make our staple crops more nutritious. If we can put beta carotene in the rice of third world farmers just imagine what we could do with our OWN food. You could turn your staple crop of choice into a fucking multivitamin.... shift the resources in it to fats and proteins. And that is just the ONE crop.
A more reeasonable way to do it would be to have about 20 different breeds of wheat etc and have each one have its own special characteristics. THEN you just blend them together in the desired ratios at the flour mill. The health nuts will blend their own and most people will be happy with a standard blend.
We can also do stuff like change gultin to something else that people aren't sometimes allergic to.
Then of course there is the human body. The body does not NEED exercise to build muscle. It is TRIGGERED to build muscle by exercise. Those triggers can be adjusted. Ideally you want them to be related to food intake. If in some future we go into famine, the body must not keep assuming it has access to our 21st century food supply. It has to adapt. And of course, if you're getting lots of food, the body shouldn't stock pile excessive amounts of fat but rather build up some healthy muscle.
On top of that, we should awaken the portions of our genes that permit regeneration. Currently we have only a few parts of our bodies that regenerate. The intestines for example still regenerate. But there is no reason it couldn't grow new internal organs, grow new limbs, grow new eyes, new ears, regenerate nerves, etc.All of that is latent in our biology.
And while we're doing that... how about raise the standard human IQ to something less obnoxiously pitiful. Because boy oh boy are there are a lot of morons.
We could just raise wages (Score:3)
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I think the rich being thinner has more to do with better food and better exercise.
Re:We could just raise wages (Score:4, Insightful)
No. It's about having better impulse control.
Poor people are also much more likely to have 5 children each with a different person. Maintaining a healthy weight requires some degree of effort and discipline. People that never adequately prepared for their future are simply demonstrating the same faults in their eating habits as they have done in other things.
Being poor doesn't eliminate the possibility of doing better. People like that are just less likely to stay poor (been there, done that).
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So are professional athletes.
Gene-engineer us to eat less (Score:2)
"Then of course there is the human body. The body does not NEED exercise to build muscle..."
If you're going the gene mod route with regard the human body, why not just genetically engineer humans to want to eat less? Should be simpler than turning us all into Arnold Schwarzenegger and save a couple of million of cows and chickens from the endless cycle of rebirth (after we butcher them for one final barbeque).
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But the food industry has a vested interest in feeding you crap:
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food [nytimes.com]
If everyone ate fruits, veggies, and lean meat, then how can they sell you overpriced sugary crap?
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Its not so simple as the "evil corporations"...
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And while we're doing that... how about raise the standard human IQ to something less obnoxiously pitiful. Because boy oh boy are there are a lot of morons.
We are [wsj.com]
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But...didn't researchers at Marvel already establish that this may sometimes lead to people dying in sudden, very hot explosions? :-P
.. with smoking? (Score:3)
Americans are used to eating shitty food, and lots of it. But there is also the issue of .. tobacco smoking. Every time I go to Europe, I see that nearly every second person, men and women, smoke all the time. Tobacco is a great appetite inhibitor. I recall that when I myself quit smoking, I might have gained something like 15-20 pounds of weight, real fast. I have some friends from eastern Europe, and they're skinny as hell, and they also smoke. They're doctors, and whenever I start discussion the effect o
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As to the sort of proof... I mean for any kind of firm scientific position you need to have some empirical evidence. My position is admittedly my own guess as to the issue. But your point about temperature, some new chemical in our environment. or a virus is possible.
I question the virus... I think we'd find that. I'm not sure about the chemical.
I think what you'd want to do is feed the mouse some food that is linked to the conventional human food supply chain. And then feed another group of rats something
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And do that over the course of thirty years. Oh wait...mice don't live thirty years and they don't reproduce when they're thirty years old.
Lab mice live maybe 6 months. How much are you going to learn about what happens to people who eat the same shit for 30 years from creatures that live six months?
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Nope.
Modern mouse right now fed food linked to the human food chain RIGHT NOW... versus some hermetically sealed mouse eating hydroponically grown whatever.
And while you're at it, have some of the mice in one temperature environment and some others in another temperature environment.
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well, it wouldn't mr. other random guy on the internet; see obese mothers tend to have heavier babies. If a fetus is being marinated in insulin, there's a good chance that baby will grow up to be obese. Please try to contradict that.
I'd also have to counter, the rise in obesity tracks very, very, very well to the rise in carbohydrate consumption.
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It could also mean that the mothers are just too goddamn fat, eating foods filled with artificial hormones and other shit out of a Monsanto scientist's fever dream.
People are getting fatter, so let's see...what's the biggest change in our food supply over the past twenty years? What is the biggest change in the provenance
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The anti gene lobby is about as reasonable as the anti nuclear lobby and I don't have a lot of patience for either.
As to the idea of just fixing everything through education... that's a stop gap at best. Long term we're going to genetically engineer ourselves and our food.
We stand at the cusp of the third revolution evolution on this planet.
First we had random mutation.
Second we had sexual selection.
Third we're going to have intelligent design.
Its happening. All you can do is slow it down a little. That's i
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He might be, but no one is new to the AC trolls shitting all over other people's posts from the shadows.
Tell me little one, what is your post history? Oh that's right, you don't have one.
So to judge me based on a criteria you go out of your way to not have is at best hypocritical and at worst discietful.
As I assume you're proobably the recurring AC troll that follows me around everywhere, you're just a liar. You say stupid shit all the time and who is going to judge you for it?
I won't because unlike you, I
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He might be, but no one is new to the AC trolls shitting all over other people's posts from the shadows.
Tell me little one, what is your post history? Oh that's right, you don't have one.
So to judge me based on a criteria you go out of your way to not have is at best hypocritical and at worst discietful.
As I assume you're proobably the recurring AC troll that follows me around everywhere, you're just a liar. You say stupid shit all the time and who is going to judge you for it?
I won't because unlike you, I don't have any interest in sniffing your panties.
And no one else will because they can't keep you fucks straight.
People like you provide NOTHING of value to the community. You just go around spreading negativity, take no responsibility for anything, and trolololol.
There are plenty of ACs posting plenty of crazy things. You do not have some sort of AC stalker. Please. For the good of us all. Take your meds!
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I do actually. I call him "bingo"... and he does appear in most places I post eventually.
Have you never been trolled? Anyway, Bingo follows me around and makes really stupid hostile comments. And I'll call him bingo and he doesn't even react to that anymore. If it were a different guy he'd say 'why are you calling me bingo" or something. He did that the first couple times and he just takes it in stride now. :)
Anyway, trolls exist. Saying otherwise is silly.
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There are plenty of ACs posting plenty of crazy things. You do not have some sort of AC stalker.
Anyone who has been on Slashdot posting their actual opinion for any length of time has had AC stalkers. At minimum, they've been stalked by APK.
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yep... again, it is going to happen.
Stop for a moment and rise above the flow of time. See out 10,000... 100,000 years. You honestly think someone isn't going to do this?
Come now.
And who does it first will largely depend on whether relatively law abiding democratic societies pull the trigger and do it first.
Look at the Soviets or the Nazis or the Imperial japanese. They weren't even that long ago and each had a certain technical proficiency and gave not so many fucks about what YOU happened to think about i
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everyone. Especially your mother.
Mostly because our food is shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
Honestly 90% of what we consumer is not food but just piles of sugar coated shit.
Stop eating at any restaurants, Stop eating anything that comes in a box or Bag. Hell even our bread is so sweet that most europeans call it cake.
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Correction: I believe highly processed food is more shit-coated sugar than sugar-coated shit.
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Re:Mostly because our food is shit. (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple years ago I decided to give up refined sugar in general for a few months, particularly soda (like any good dev, I consumed more than my share of the stuff). After 3 months without, I drank a Dr. Pepper (my favorite) and it was disgusting. Tasted like a mouthful of sugar. Amazing how much you become desensitized to sugar, and the same holds for salt.
The real surprise was one day when I discovered that carrots are actually sweet. They just don't seem that way when you consume a metric ton of refined sugar every week. That really made me start wondering just how badly my perception of foods had been corrupted over the years.
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A couple years ago I decided to give up refined sugar in general for a few months, particularly soda (like any good dev, I consumed more than my share of the stuff). After 3 months without, I drank a Dr. Pepper (my favorite) and it was disgusting. Tasted like a mouthful of sugar. Amazing how much you become desensitized to sugar, and the same holds for salt.
The real surprise was one day when I discovered that carrots are actually sweet. They just don't seem that way when you consume a metric ton of refined sugar every week. That really made me start wondering just how badly my perception of foods had been corrupted over the years.
Yes carrots are sweet, especially right from the garden. The carrots that most grocery stores have are pretty much crap. You want to know what else is sweet raw and right from the ground, potatoes. You wouldn't think so, but they are.
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Very well then. I'll just grab a few of these loose potatoes here... that 24 oz. steak wrapped in paper looks good, and uh... let's wash it down with a couple of those 40s over there.
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It counts as a sugar. Stop eating anything that has added sweeter, whether it sugar, corn syrup, aspartame, splenda, etc. It doesn't matter.
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Both erythritol and stevia may actually have positive health effects. Sweet doesn't equal bad... just sugar
Splenda may be bad, but not because it behaves like sugar normally does.
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Interesting there's some evidence that even artificial sweeteners can screw with your insulin system a bit, though not as much as real sugar. Mostly because the brain thinks that sugar is incoming and produces insulin for the expected inrush of sugar which never occurs.
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Mad Men (Score:2)
Which Woman Did They Check? (Score:5, Funny)
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Not likely, the 1960's guy was completely in the closet. He did his dick sucking private and when he put his wife's clothes on he made sure she wasn't around.
Bodyfat percentage, not total weight, please. (Score:2)
Re:Bodyfat percentage, not total weight, please. (Score:4, Insightful)
Significant to have scientifically sound data, yes.
Significant to understand the problem, no. I just have to take a look outside to realize that even adjusted for muscle mass/body fat percentage would be an insignificant ripple in the data.
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HOwever... (Score:5, Funny)
The one-inch gain in height was dwarfed (so to speak) by the six-inch gain in heights listed on online dating sites.
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They didn't have online dating sites back in the 1960s. You had Computer Dating [britishpathe.com].
And taller? (Score:2)
Re: And taller? (Score:2)
Correlation is not causation, they may have common causes, for example
*ducks*
More fit, too. (Score:2)
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Hey!, I'm not fat, I'm just big boned!
Americans have totally lost perspective on what is considered a healthy weight and a healthy diet. People in general consistently underestimate their own body fat percentage, even in the bodybuilding community where there are six-pack abs abound. I'm pretty sure any doctor that would suggest weight loss to patient with a BMI of 25+ alongside a six-pack, wouldn't keep his license for very long, Yet, somehow countless obese people are so delusional that they think th
WHAT!? Increased gravity!? (Score:2)
Why are they only telling us now of this isolated increase in gravitational pull? Can they even grasp the consequences!?!? How is this even possible!?!?
Nevermind. Finally read the summary.
what took you so long? (Score:4, Funny)
"U.S. men have been getting bigger too, gaining nearly 30 pounds from the 1960s to 2010"
Pfftph! I've gained 30 pounds in the last 2 years.
Let them not eat cake. (Score:2)
Maybe because this is a bodybuilding forum... (Score:3)
When it comes to online discussions regarding obesity, ~50% of commenters are unfairly evaluated hulking muscular athletic edge cases.
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Re:So what's that in metric? (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't worry, continentals. You'll be catching up to us soon: http://qz.com/89553/europeans-... [qz.com]
Well, at least your wine, beer and cheese is better... oh wait, it's not.
http://www.worldbeercup.org/wi... [worldbeercup.org]
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Not saying the US doesn't have good beer, but that "award" is clearly bullshit if COORS is considered the best "large brewery" in the world. IMO it's the worst in the *US*, and there are a lot of bad large US breweries.
Anyway, at the high end anyone can make good wine, beer, and cheese. Where Europe really smacks down the US is in the high quality of the basic, low cost items.
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Sure, they have a bunch of labels, but they are all pretty poor to average at best:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
And of course Coors and Coors Light are still their signature brands. Just because they have a few decent niche brands doesn't mean they should be given a pass for the rest.
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Re:So what's that in metric? (Score:4, Insightful)
A World Beer Cup where only a fraction of breweries outside of the USA participate in?
Look at the list of participants, for instance for Belgium only 27 breweries (some of which are owned by the same company) are listed, that's like one sixth of the Belgian breweries only.
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More like muscles are high upkeep so you have to exercise to keep them, if you just asked a muscular guy to not exercise he wouldn't lose much weight. In fact unless he adjusted his eating habits he'd be a lot more likely to gain weight. And if you reward yourself with junk food and snacks after exercise it won't do you any good at all. There's three very good effects though:
1) If you're already on a healthy diet it's easier to exercise more than reduce intake even further.
2) The ratio of muscles to fat is
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There is being overweight from being muscular built, then there is being hulking huge.
The BMI metric for ideal weight doesn't factor in people who are more built, so it is a healthy weight as the strength is more than adequate to handle the body. But yes if you bulk up, chances are you do this at the trade off of doing cardio work, also bulking up is a lot of low weight reps, so you are not as strong as someone with a more leaner strength build.
But being 25 lbs heavier in muscle then some one who is just
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Re:What about body fat % (Score:4, Informative)
There is an even simpler measurement that correlates well with obesity risks - waist circumference.
e.g http://www.healthdirect.gov.au... [healthdirect.gov.au]
No scales or body fat measuring devices are required, only a tape measure.
The old excuses like being "big boned" or having high muscle mass don't apply.
Don't focus on weight, which has many confounding factors. If your waistline decreases because you lose abdominal fat, you will be healthier.
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I have one of these in my scale. I like the idea of it, but it's not remotely specific, the number varies +-20% daily (and this is in the context of a total body water reading that varies by maybe 2% daily). Building up a long history with a moving average might be defensible but I still feel like the "cheap" solution is for entertainment purposes only.
Hydrometry: accept no substitutes.
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In the age of cheap body fat % measuring devices, why not make body fat % the standard? I'm tall and borderline overweight according to BMI, but I have about 14% body fat percentage. It's much easier to compare across body types with that metric than BMI. Yet I've never had a doctor record my body fat %, only height and weight.
Except for one problem, a recent study (highlighted on 60 minutes) found that older people live longer if they have a bit of extra body fat. One of the reasons posited by the researchers was that their systems have extra energy stores to get them through being sick, etc.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wa... [cbsnews.com]
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We have been feeling the fallout of Redit drama for a while now. How many articles on how we need more women in STEM have we had in the last 6 months?
My wife has a bachelors in mechanical engineering from MIT and works in a field that uses her degree. She has told me that she's tired of hearing "STEM" as it always seems to come from people that do not hold any degree in the hard sciences, or in technology, or in engineering, or in mathematics. If they want to push for people to get degrees in these fields, then they should put their money, time, and energy where their mouth is and go back and get a degree from among those kinds, then start advocating f
Re:Fasting (Score:2)
On that note, fasting can be good for you [thedianerehmshow.org].
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I thought BMI was actually a good measure for large populations, which is was it was designed for.
Because people you* average out against the rest of the population
It's a poor measure for individuals. Always has been and was never designed to apply to.
* or what you claim to be you.
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Let's for a second turn off the censor and cut strait to what the BMI is all about. It's about telling fat people that they're fat. A healthy person, particularly athletic persons knows that BMI is not applicable to them and generally ignore it. Could we come up with a metric that accommodates healthy people with above average muscle mass? Sure. But there's no point, and it would be over complicated, more difficult to apply by lay persons, and detract from the original objective.
The funny bit that does
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The BMI is only valid even for a subset of Northern Europeans. For people that are taller it's invalid. It's also invalid for other ethnic groups.
Peformance is a far more useful metric. It also separates out the anorexics from those that are genuinely fit.
Those BMI numbers also originally arose from a time of global economic catastrophe. Their value should be doubted simply for that.
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It's inaccurate for most people. If you're tall then it doesn't scale correctly. I'm 6'2", should I weigh 145 pounds? The BMI calculation would say that was normal weight! I'm 225 with a 36" waist, which almost makes me obese. I exercise and try to eat right, most of the time. If I trimmed down to 200 pounds I would still be considered overweight!
Using a bad formula that doesn't take into account body fat% is ridiculous.
.