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The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

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Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#31

Post by swatcoder »

paulpauper wrote: post #11

The Mario Kart ride restricts anyone with a 40 inch waist or larger from riding. According to the CDC, the average American man's waist is 40.5 inches, which means most American men would be excluded from the ride. The average American woman's waist is 38.7 inches. wtf. I remember being a 38 and that was pretty big and fat. I am now down to a 31. The obesity situation is worse than I thought. I wonder where the limit…

Not to take away from your shock or from congratulations on your transformation, but I suspect you’re talking about pant sizing and the article is talking about actual waist measurement.

Fashion sizing is notoriously generous and no longer reflects real/tailor measurements. The off-the-rack pants labeled as 32 or 36 or 40 are almost never reflective of an actual tailor’s measurement anymore. They’re essentially just the comfortable size for people who identify with that number and are often quite a bit larger than they used to be.

Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#32

Post by graeme »

elromulous wrote: post #8
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

Wow, the linked CDC page in the article says the average American male over age 20 is 5'9" and 200 lbs. That gives a BMI of 29.5, while obesity is defined as >30. Pretty amazing.

But also BMI is a crap metric, since it doesn't account for percent fat / muscle.

> But also BMI is a crap metric, since it doesn't account for percent fat / muscle.

Sure, but for some reason everyone assumes BMI overstates obesity.

The opposite is more likely true. Strength and muscle mass are declining as waist size increases.

One study looked at this. BMI found ~30% of the participants were obese. But a body fat analysis showed 60% were obese!

Staggering difference, but in wrong direction

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#33

Post by graeme »

Ariarule wrote: post #19
ianburrell wrote: post #5

Another example of confusing mean and median. The CDC is reporting the mean waist size. But the article talks about the “average man” and “most men” wouldn’t fit. That is the median. Waist may be normal distribution like height which means they are close. But I think the distribution may be unbalanced with limit on low weight but none on high.

Why speculate? _Anthropometric Reference Data for Children and Adults_, Table 20 "Waist circumference in centimeters for adult males aged 20 and over and number of examined persons, mean, standard error of the mean, and selected percentiles, by race and Hispanic origin and age: United States, 2015–2018" is right at https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf The mean in the very first row is 102.9 cm…

Their point was that mean might be higher than median. That said, from your data is isn’t much higher, so they’re broadly wrong. Headline fairly close to accurate for median too

Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#34

Post by nostrademons »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

Wow, the linked CDC page in the article says the average American male over age 20 is 5'9" and 200 lbs. That gives a BMI of 29.5, while obesity is defined as >30. Pretty amazing.

Not all that surprising. Take a look at obesity rates over time:

https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/vucjky/oc_...

Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#35

Post by dghughes »

swatcoder wrote: post #31
paulpauper wrote: post #11

The Mario Kart ride restricts anyone with a 40 inch waist or larger from riding. According to the CDC, the average American man's waist is 40.5 inches, which means most American men would be excluded from the ride. The average American woman's waist is 38.7 inches. wtf. I remember being a 38 and that was pretty big and fat. I am now down to a 31. The obesity situation is worse than I thought. I wonder where the limit…

Not to take away from your shock or from congratulations on your transformation, but I suspect you’re talking about pant sizing and the article is talking about actual waist measurement. Fashion sizing is notoriously generous and no longer reflects real/tailor measurements. The off-the-rack pants labeled as 32 or 36 or 40 are almost never reflective of an actual tailor’s measurement anymore. They’re essentially just…

Although I prefer actual units be used instead of vague small, medium, large sizes for clothes and or barelycorns for shoe size. Just give me metric units!

Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#36

Post by strken »

jdeisenberg wrote: post #20
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BMI may be a crap metric for individuals, but not for large population samples. I guarantee you that nearly half of American men aren't at obese-level BMIs because bodybuilders are somehow making a dent in the numbers.

Some interesting information about the BMI in this opinion piece: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=106268... (Top 10 Reasons Why The BMI Is Bogus)

The very first reason is "1. The person who dreamed up the BMI said explicitly that it could not and should not be used to indicate the level of fatness in an individual.", which is the exact point being made: at a population level BMI is useful.

Additionally, BMI is imprecise, but imprecise doesn't mean useless. If you took a random sample of people with a BMI of 40+ from across the whole population, almost none of them would be near optimal healthy weight; a random sample of 30+, still relatively few. Those few who are healthy at that BMI know it. BMI's maybe not so useful for someone who's hovering around 19 or 28, but at the extreme edges it's very indicative of body fat.

Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#37

Post by josephcsible »

gnicholas wrote: post #2

It's hard to make a ride that fits both skinny kids and large adults. It's tricky because kids are usually let on if they're at least x inches tall, but that doesn't factor in if they're so skinny that they'll be at risk of slipping out. As a kid, I had several experiences where I think I could have fallen out of a ride if I hadn't actively pushed down on the bar and pinned my legs in a wide stance. Now that my daugh…

> It's hard to make a ride that fits both skinny kids and large adults.

Accepting this as true (which seems reasonable), the outcome here seems like the right one. After all, society shouldn't cater to people who make poor lifestyle choices at the expense of people who make good lifestyle choices.

Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#38

Post by mensetmanusman »

elromulous wrote: post #8
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #4

Wow, the linked CDC page in the article says the average American male over age 20 is 5'9" and 200 lbs. That gives a BMI of 29.5, while obesity is defined as >30. Pretty amazing.

But also BMI is a crap metric, since it doesn't account for percent fat / muscle.

It was also a crap metric 50 years ago, and the metric being consistent is what matters.

Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#39

Post by orionblastar »

I remember the St. Louis Six Flags Batman The Ride and I was too big to fit into it. I dieted and exercised until I lost a lot of weight so I could fit into it. Most of these rides are made for teenagers and are thus smaller than the adult sizes.

Re: The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride

#40

Post by TulliusCicero »

benatkin wrote: post #16
ianburrell wrote: post #5

Another example of confusing mean and median. The CDC is reporting the mean waist size. But the article talks about the “average man” and “most men” wouldn’t fit. That is the median. Waist may be normal distribution like height which means they are close. But I think the distribution may be unbalanced with limit on low weight but none on high.

I don't see an issue. The headline says average and that normally means mean , not median . It also doesn't say that half of people are excluded from it. People reading the article are used to hearing about the average household credit card debt in the USA, and that's also the mean. Edit: I missed the most men part. Other than that it's fine. That would be like if those credit card debt stories said that "most househ…

No, whether average refers to mean or median depends on the context.
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