EFL:
| Whoa! Watch your head there, big boy! |
Better nutrition has helped Americans grow a little taller. But it's been too much of a good thing: The nation is also a whole lot fatter.
| Yes. I've noticed my own tonnage increasing... |
Adults are roughly an inch taller than they were in the early 1960s, on average, and nearly 25 pounds heavier, the government reported Wednesday.
| Whatcha might call "the heaviest inch," huh? |
The nation's expanding waistline has been well documented, though Wednesday's report is the first to quantify it based on how many pounds the average person is carrying. The reasons are no surprise: more fast food, more television and less walking around the neighborhood, to name a few. Earlier this year, researchers reported that obesity fueled by poor diet and lack of activity threatens to overtake tobacco use as the leading preventable cause of death.
| Actually, I put on quite a few pounds when I dropped the gaspers. When I stopped fitting in my favorite chair and was biting people and calling them names for no reason, I took up the pipe, at which point I deflated somewhat, but not all the way... |
| The Rantburg house doc sez, lose the pipe. |
In 1960-62, the average man weighed 166.3 pounds. By 1999-2002, the average had reached 191 pounds, according to the National Center for Health Statistics -- part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- which issued the report. Similarly, the report said, the average woman's weight rose from 140.2 pounds to 164.3 pounds. At same time, though less dramatically, Americans are getting a little bit taller. Men's average height increased from 5 feet 8 inches in the early 1960s to 5 feet 9 1/2 inches in 1999-2002. The average height of a woman, meanwhile, went from just over 5 feet 3 inches to 5 feet 4 inches. The increases in height and weight are both fueled by the availability of more food, researchers say. To reach genetic potential for height, the human body needs a certain level of nourishment, and Wednesday's report shows that Americans have achieved it, said David Katz, director of Yale University's Prevention Research Center.
There are fewer opportunities for what you might call "normal" exercise. When I was a lad, we walked to the grocery store and we could walk downtown to shop. Zoning laws in most places don't allow for the growth of small towns like that, so people drive instead. We cut the grass with a push mower, trimmed the hedges with clippers, and when we did something around the house we cut wood with hand saws. And most people smoked, which also tends to keep weight down. The workplace has become more sedentary as well; you don't see a lot of ads for laborers anymore, and there aren't many people willing to take the jobs anyway. Even if there were, wages and benefits have risen to the point where it's cheaper to buy a machine to dig ditches.
The net result is that exercise becomes more formalized and ritualistic, and also something that can be put off. That's really too bad, but it's an effect of multiple causes, each of which has a set of benefits that we don't want to give up. A hundred years ago, it was normal for men and women in middle age to become a bit portly; it was a sign of success in life, meaning you could buy groceries regularly, which is something we take for granted now. When housewives first began counting calories in the early 1900s it was to make sure the family was getting enough, not too many. The society we live in today is more prosperous for more people than the society of 1904, so there's more of that particular sign of success. Not quite paradoxically, it's the rich folks today, who have the liesure to devote to the gym, who're slim trim and beautiful. The rest of us, filling most of the hours of our day with multiple desk jobs and food taken on the run, grow more portly. |
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