The Average American Woman Now Weighs As Much As the Average 1960s Man

The average American woman weighs 166.2 pounds (75.38kg), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As it was recently pointed out, that's almost exactly as much as the average American man weighed in the early 1960s.

Men aren't looking too good in this scenario either. Over the same time period, males gained nearly 30 pounds - 13.6kg (from 75.4kg - in the 60s to 88.67kg today).

Overall weight gain since 1960 is slightly greater for women (18.5 percent) than for men (17.6 percent). And both sexes have gained roughly an inch in height over the same period, which accounts for some of that weight gain.

But the stats are mainly about growing girth and it comes down to three factors: we're eating less healthy food, we're eating more of it, and we're not moving around as much.

According to a study published in 2012 in the journal BMC Public Health, Americans are now the world's third-heaviest people, behind only the Pacific island nations of Tonga and Micronesia.

The average American is 33 pounds (14.9kg) heavier than the average Frenchman, 40 (18kg) pounds heavier than the average Japanese citizen, and 70p ounds(31.7kg!) heavier than the average citizen of Bangladesh. 

The study concludes that "tackling population fatness may be critical to world food security and ecological sustainability." 

Source