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Comment by ip26 | Hacker News Reader

It could also be that Americans are bigger.

(I'm not referring to height)

Asian living in US and somehow we have come to prefer SUVs too and no it is not because we are fat(I used to drive Hyundai i10 in India), it is because at the end of day SUVs indeed are more comfortable. Taking out baby car seats and putting it back is easier in a SUV. Going on 100mile+ drive is easier in SUV. Mother-in-law visiting? - picking her up(with entire family) from Airport is easier in SUV. So on and so forth.

Obviously - one gets used to these things. In India - typically for example whole family does not go to pick one up from Airport. Babies don't have to be ferreted around in cars that much. Furniture delivery is almost always free in India whereas in US either you have to pay extra or pick up.

A minivan serves a similar purpose.

You should try a Volvo V70 or V90, VW Passat Variant or Audi A6 Avant if you still think SUVs are confortable. No more bouncing around at >120 kmh. Toyota probably also has a comparable Auris Touring or those Verso models. And then there's the Mercedes V Class if you have an extended family.

But American cars were bigger in the 50s and 60s too. A very brief search shows that Americans were taller than Europeans then, but the same search shows that they are now too. Not the best source. https://ourworldindata.org/human-height

Yes, a big drop in the ranking apparently:

> Men and women in the United States also experienced a growth spurt, but to a lesser degree. In 1914, U.S. men were the third tallest in the world, and U.S. women were the fourth tallest. But despite increases in height of 2.2 inches and 2 inches (6 cm and 5 cm), respectively, U.S. men are now ranked 37th and women are ranked 42nd, the study found.

https://www.livescience.com/55580-tallest-shortest-people-in...

I have a feeling mexico is a huge factor in that, but have never seen height in US broken down to by race/ethnicity.

except, we aren't. people are fat everywhere. we aren't even the fattest country.

What is more relevant here is fatness of population among car manufacturing nations. Not sure that the US wins that either though.

which country is the fattest? I assumed it was here in the US.

In obesity rankings, Pacific island nations tend to top the list. I think Mexico is fatter than the US, as well as the the petrostates in the Middle East.

Not the fatest, but really close. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_body_ma...

36.2% obesity, 12th place. Beaten mostly by small island nations. It's still the 1st most obese western country.

BMI might not be the best indicator since it also factors in height. If we go by weight only, USA is #3 behind two small island nations.

Americans are big. They also have more fat people than other western nations.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/earthnews/9345086/The...

Your suggestion of weight only is even worse than BMI. That's like saying a 15 lb turkey is fatter than 12 lbs of lard.

BMI doesn't account for muscle mass. If you have decent muscle you're overweight according to BMI.

weight only < BMI < caliper measurements

Any article that equates fatness with weight is not accurate.

I guess I'm trying to argue that Americans are more voluminous, and trying to approximate volume through mass since body volume by population isn't a commonly available stat. I'd argue that mass is closer correlated to volume than BMI.

Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps have normal BMIs. BMI is very sensitive and not very specific, meaning that it has few false positives and lots of false negatives, the opposite of what you suggest.

In this article[1] "Measuring Adiposity in Patients: The Utility of Body Mass Index (BMI), Percent Body Fat, and Leptin" you can see this dramatically illustrated in Figure 1 [2]. The upper left quadrant (different colors for men and women) is the most populous. It contains the people who are obese by body fat percentage but not BMI. The lower right is the least populated. It contains the people who are not obese by body fat percentage but who are flagged as obese by BMI.

The small fraction of the population that have devoted such attention to the cultivation of muscle over other goals, such as athletic performance, are surely well aware of their body fat levels and are unlikely to be impacted by this edge case in BMI measurement. (Their excess muscle may also not be healthy for their cardiovascular system.) Dismissing the utility of a easily applied and highly sensitive screen like BMI is a mistake, both for individuals and for public health.

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... [2] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=...

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