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The American people are becoming fatter and dumber.

One third of young people are now obese. The number was less than 5% when I was growing up.

If you watch a movie made in the 1930s or 40's, it's amazing to see how thin people were then compared to now, especially the middle aged actors.

Over the last twenty-five years, finding clothing to fit me has been a struggle, because despite being old, I'm still slim. As the clothing I was used to buying became increasingly baggy on me, I at first thought it was me--that I might somehow be wasting away as I got older.

Then I dug out a shirt I bought from Sears around 1985, and it still fitted me perfectly. That's when I realized it's not that I was shrinking, but that clothing size was expanding.

In addition to clothing becoming baggier, I suspect other products have become larger to accommodate the increasing poundage of Americans:

For some time, I've wondered why so many pleasure boats seem to be designed with little thought to the boat's sea keeping ability. Now I realize they must be designing those boats from the inside out: let's create as much room inside the cabins as possible to make room for heavy people, and as for the ungainly shape of the exterior, we'll compensate for some lost performance by adding horsepower (which would be of little use when the SHTF in one of these oversized Clorox bottles, but at least the occupants will have plenty of room to thrash around as they drown).

Also furniture has become massive: I recently helped moving a sofa from one friends house to anothers. Had I known the size of the thing, I would have been too busy that day to help. We had to partly remove the door frames--in houses built back in the day when people were slim--to get the thing in and out of the houses.

“”If you watch a movie made in the 1930s or 40’s, it’s amazing to see how thin people were then compared to now, especially the middle aged actors.””

Exactly. Stating the facts can sure get you in trouble these days. People in those days ingested fewer calories and were far more physically active. Overweight people make a hundred excuses for why this is not so and the charlatans that sympathize with them make fortunes from selling the snake oil remedies.