A no less weighty authority than the National Center for Health Statistics in Hyattsville, Md., part of the Department of Health and Human Services, has decided that Norm, who sat at the end of the bar in TV’s “Cheers,” is the norm.
The center says this based on a survey showing that more than half of America’s men, 59 percent, and just under half the women, 49 percent, are overweight. The feeling that buses seem more tightly packed and that grocery store aisles have less passing room is, apparently, not just a suspicion.
“It’s been clear for several years that Americans are getting fatter, and it’s accelerating. That’s troubling,” said Tim Byers of the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
This is the first time since the government began poking into such things that more Americans are hefty than of normal size, at least by one means of measurement.
That standard is the body mass index. The BMI has come into vogue as a way of judging obesity because it can be used easily to compare the fatness of people of different heights.
Federal guidelines establish the border between fat and not fat at a body mass index of 25. Here’s how to figure yours: Divide your weight in pounds by your height in inches. Divide this result again by your height in inches, then multiply by 705. If you have to, count on your fingers; your toes if you can see them.
This latest government revelation comes as good news to Sophie Madej, proprietor of the Busy Bee Restaurant, whose hearty Polish fare perhaps has helped tip the scales in the National Health and Nutrition Examination survey.
“I’m heavy, too,” Madej said from her North Side restaurant as the clatter of dinners being served played a background tune. “Now you have a better feeling about yourself. You see more people like we are.”
Katherine Flegal of the health statistics center, who presented the figures Tuesday in Breckenridge, Colo., to the North American Association for the Study of Obesity, noted that the development of the TV remote control, though it may make for leaner, more muscular thumbs, may account for some rise in the fat of the land. Also, she said, a fear of crime may keep people inside, away from exercise.
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“It’s just eating too much,” countered Albert Stunkard of the University of Pennsylvania. “Physical activity hasn’t increased enough to make up for it.”
Pedaling on an exercise bike at the Lakeshore Athletic Club downtown, Susan Gillam allowed that a waist is a terrible thing to mind. “I think people are getting tired of the `kill yourself’ attitude of the ’90s, so they just give up.” The Northwestern University physical therapy student said people are finding a happy medium. “People are having a positive attitude about weight.”
The survey, conducted on 30,000 people from 1991 to 1994, found that Americans in their 50s have become the fattest with 73 percent of these men and 64 percent of these women in the over-25 BMI category.
Preteens also are increasingly overweight. Extreme obesity–BMIs over 40–has doubled in a decade, with 2 percent of men and 4 percent of women in that range. A 5-foot-4-inch person, for example, with a BMI of 40 would weigh 230 pounds.
Experts say that when the BMI reaches 27, it’s time to worry. That’s 155 pounds for our example, a 5-foot-4-inch person.
But Flegal noted some weight-related health problems do not seem to be rising with the tide of increased weight. The survey showed cholesterol levels falling and blood pressure holding steady or even easing. But diabetes, which also is related to weight, may be rising.
Hadmi Norm was flipping the famed cheeseburgers at the Billy Goat Tavern and Grill on lower North Michigan Avenue. He explained one reason obesity had become more common. Though the bar cuts off people from drink when it appears they have had too much, “We don’t cut fat people off from cheeseburgers.”