There's actually a lot of research that ties our weight gain to a national increase in chicken consumption in the 60s. Google it. Lots of studies/books on this. I'm not saying don't eat chicken, but simply that changes in diets (and this was a big one) led to some larger weight gain trends.

OP are you really asking if your figure has changed over the years?

Anonymous wrote:More calories / better nutrition = taller, thicker bones, more muscles. Yes, shapes have changed, and it's not just flab and fat.

The facts don't support this. You have to lift weights to build muscle and improve bone density, not just consume more calories regardless of how "nutritious" those calories are.

We are way more sedentary than previous years.

Are you suggesting office workers have more muscle than the people who laid down the railroad tracks and built are railroad system?

Anonymous wrote:Amphetamines are kind to frowned upon now

Yes, this is what my grandmother did.

We are so, so much fatter

Anonymous wrote:"Thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six oh what a winning hand"

- The Commodores "Brick House" 1977

"Thirty six-twenty- four-thirty six? Ha ha, only if she's 5'3"

- Sir Mix-a-lot, "Baby Got Back" 1992

If the pandemic has taught us anything, Americans have a lot of pre-existing conditions, especially older and male Americans, including obesity. We are obese as a nation. It could also be that younger generations are more diverse, with more Latino and African Americans, and they have different body types along with different definitions of beauty and health and fitness.

"Thirty-six, twenty-four, thirty-six oh what a winning hand"

- The Commodores "Brick House" 1977

Teen models in the 60s and 70s weren't just slender, they had pretty much zero muscle tone.

More calories / better nutrition = taller, thicker bones, more muscles. Yes, shapes have changed, and it's not just flab and fat.

Anonymous wrote:Americans as a group are way fatter - those stats are out there. Agree you can’t ignore the impact of malnutrition on a child’s frame. I think the opposite is true as well. You can’t ignore the impact of being overweight on a child’s frame. The amount of processed food compared with a 100 years ago is radically different too.

By the 1920s, there was a lot of processed food around. Shoot, our comparison point is probably the 1970s, which featured a lot more bologna sandwiches on wonder bread with Hellmann's than you'd find in the homes of the DCUM demographic today.

Physical activity has gone way down. Labor saving gadgets in the home, lower demands for labor-intensive activities (ironed any shirts lately?), lawn services riding zero-turn mowers instead of the neighbor's child pushing a 12" gasoline mower up and down the hill, Asian tiger mosquitos forcing people indoors, online gaming.

Variety of food has gone way up. Do you want Thai or Mexican? Exotic tropical fruits? Diversity triggers consumption. You're more likely to try and finish off today's fancy enchilada than the two hundred and seventh brown-bagged salami sandwich you've had so far this year.

Palatability of most food has increased - even Red Delicious apples, while not great, are a lot tastier than the variety once was. Less canned, more fresh or frozen. Shipping companies are faster and better at babying produce so that things arrive at peak.

Americans as a group are way fatter - those stats are out there. Agree you can’t ignore the impact of malnutrition on a child’s frame. I think the opposite is true as well. You can’t ignore the impact of being overweight on a child’s frame. The amount of processed food compared with a 100 years ago is radically different too.

Yes we are also bigger from a frame perspective. Like cattle fed a corn diet (versus free range or grass fed), we look like marbled meat cattle and many of our frames adjust to hold the added weight. Seriously you can see the “look” in cattle.

Agree that working out and lifting weight are good but I don’t think we’re more virtuous than ancestors nor necessarily worse. We have the challenges of our time. We should make the healthiest choices we can and we shouldn’t be concerned about access to good nutrition for the poor among us.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:We walked/biked more. There were fewer fast food places; we didn’t eat out as much. No supersized sodas.

Oh, yeah, not as much screen time.

Frappuccinos and sodas are not the reason I have a 25-26 inch waist and not a 24 inch waist. It’s bone structure and muscle mass. 24 inches would require a particularly narrow frame which I just don’t have. I was wondering if this was somehow more common before.

Maybe malnutrition from folks growing up in the 30s.

This.

And, if you see pictures of regular people from an era, there are usually a wide array of body sizes. Magazines tend to feature what is trendy.

I don't know. When I look at my parents' high school year book from the 70s, nearly every single teenage girl and boy is thin and lean. Now, when I see high school kids, most of girls have substantial spare tires. Boys seem to be more even split of normal and overweight.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We walked/biked more. There were fewer fast food places; we didn’t eat out as much. No supersized sodas.

Oh, yeah, not as much screen time.

Frappuccinos and sodas are not the reason I have a 25-26 inch waist and not a 24 inch waist. It’s bone structure and muscle mass. 24 inches would require a particularly narrow frame which I just don’t have. I was wondering if this was somehow more common before.

Maybe malnutrition from folks growing up in the 30s.

This.

And, if you see pictures of regular people from an era, there are usually a wide array of body sizes. Magazines tend to feature what is trendy.

Anonymous wrote:For those old enough to remember the 60s and 70s, were 24-inch waists as common as the movies and magazines indicate?

My question is not whether Americans have gotten larger on average, this is a confirmed fact. What I’m wondering is if bodies and figures have evolved to be heavier and wider, even among healthy people, and if it’s necessarily in a negative way.
I have a 25.5 inch waist, most people would consider me thin and healthy, and I don’t have any belly fat to lose. For me to take two inches off my waist, you’d have to remove part of my ribcage or rearrange some of my internal organs. It just doesn’t seem like a 24 inch waist would be healthy or advisable for most women (surely some can pull it off, but certainly not all) Did women 50 years ago more commonly have a narrower or more fragile bone structure?

Of course not. Magazines and movies, then as now, skew toward slender women. If someone 60 or so years from now looked at our contemporary movies and magazines, they would probably think today's women must have been very thin and fit because that's what these media always showcase. I was around back then and saw women of all shapes and sizes, just as now. Of course, there are more obese people in general these days, but you already know that. The one thing that IS different is that women back then typically used more restrictive undergarments when out in public than we do now. So you saw less wiggle and waggle.