[RankingMember]

> The average American, both male and female, has more muscle mass than in 1924.

I don't necessarily disagree with your thesis, but I'd be genuinely interested in reading the source on this, unless you just mean because people are bigger overall they have more muscle as a function of weight.

[bradarner]

No, I do mean precisely the average muscle mass is higher. Granted we are dealing with statistics. There is inevitably a lot more context than just a myopic focus on this single fact.

Dated but still relevant: https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/evolution-bmi-values-us-adult...

This is particular relevant in the military because your fitness level is graded relative to you BMI. Hence, it is common trope one hears in the military. It is a practical question in the military. If the BMI is based on 1950's pilots and today's soldiers have a higher average BMI, then it can have an impact on promotions, fitness scores, health assessments, etc.

[johnyzee]

They keep lowering the standards for acceptance into the military, because young people are becoming less and less fit.

Just one link out of many (this is well known): https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-...

[grogenaut]

Without a Waiver due to:

* obesity (the topic) (11%)

* drug use (marajuana in a country where it's legal in 24 of 50 states) (8%)

* mental / physical health (7%)

how much of that was just previously hidden or lied about? also it doesn't show any previous stats. So can't really draw any conclusions. also doesn't cover where the deltas were from.

[dragonwriter]

> drug use (marajuana in a country where it’s legal in 24 of 50 states)

Marijuana is illegal everywhere in the US under federal law. 47 states, the District of Colombia, Guam, and the US Virgin Islands have restructured their own marijuana laws to except from them use of marijuana, generally or in specific forms, for medical use. 24 of those states, D.C., Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands have (also, except in the last case) done the same for adult (over 21) recreational marijuana use [0], as well. The federal government has an official (in the form of a restriction in appropriations laws since 2015) policy of non-enforcement for now (without waiving the possibility of future enforcement within the statute of limitations should that funding restriction lapse) of certain federal criminal prohibitions against state-authorized medical use. (However, for example, all financial institutions are required to file Suspicious Activity Reports with Treasury’s FinCEN for all marijuana-related businesses they discover to be clients, even if the businesses are exclusively involved in activities covered by that enforcement deferment.)

[0] For those interested in inverting this, marijuana use has neither medical nor adult-use exceptions under state/territorial law in only 3 states (Idaho, Kansas, and Nebraska) plus American Samoa.

[StanislavPetrov]

Obesity rates have roughly tripled in the last 60 years.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity-adult-17-18/Est...

The data isn't hidden or lied about. If you think the data is fudged, go pick up a high school year book or photo album from the 1950s or 1960s and take a look at the young people.

[grogenaut]

I didn't say it was fudged.... mmmm fudge... I was pointing out that the article is pretty useless for determining if it's obesity or other for seeing why they're changing the requirements.

Also as the gpgp was talking about... in many places obseity is purely based on weight / height ratio... which doesn't bring muscle into account. So all I can say is I can't really say what factors are involved.

[sn9]

Even at the high school level, coaches for sports like football have noticed in the past 10-20 years that the fitness of incoming students has precipitously declined because so much of how children spend their time is less playing outside (e.g., running around, jumping, climbing, etc.) but playing inside (e.g., video games, doomscrolling, watching Youtube, etc.).

Suburbs around the country are quiet after school as all the kids are inside physically atrophying.

[karaterobot]

Sorry, what am I missing here? Your link talks about average weight and BMI increasing, not muscle mass. You couldn't safely draw a conclusion about muscle mass from BMI.