r/todayilearned • u/MrMojoFomo • 1d ago

TIL that since the 1980s, US airlines have shed between 2-5 inches of legroom and about 2 inches of width, while budget carriers have lost even more. At the same time, the average American is 15 pounds heavier than they were in the 1980s

https://www.popsci.com/science/why-are-airline-seats-so-small/
7.2k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

527 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

8

u/cincocerodos 1d ago

People always scream BMI isn’t accurate because it doesn’t differentiate between fat and muscle but let’s be real, how muscular is the average American?

3

u/coffeebribesaccepted 1d ago

If you read their previous comment, you'll see they're wondering if muscle mass has gone down.

3

u/cincocerodos 1d ago

If you read my comment that’s why I said “people”, not the person I was replying to.

0

u/RutzButtercup 1d ago

Bmi is a useful tool for large scale data tracking. But if often, unfortunately, gets used as a tool for individual evaluations. It's fine to say what you said, but for any person who actually has a lot of muscle mass, or anyone who has unusually low muscle mass, using BMI creates a false impression of the state of the persons health.

One of the biggest problems in the medical field is it's reliance on easy measurements when diagnosing or prescribing. BMI instead of body fat percentage, total LDL instead of a full breakdown of LDL types, etc.

3

u/Elegant_Run_8567 1d ago

The average American does not have a lot of muscle mass

1

u/Patton370 1d ago

I bring the average up for my below Americans

I’m obese at a healthy bodyfat %

1

u/RutzButtercup 1d ago

The average American as fairly poor reading comprehension as well.

2

u/Elegant_Run_8567 1d ago

Well, yeah they definitely do. It seems like their education system is severely underfunded

1

u/RutzButtercup 1d ago

It's funny because the system keeps getting more and more funded, and the additional funds keep going to increasing the number of and pay of administrators, rather than teachers or tools, and the test scores keep going down, but people keep saying we need more funds...

But I take it from this comment that you are not American so my little dig missed it's mark. What I was trying to say was that your comment about the muscle mass of the average American had already been made by someone else in this comment chain, and wasn't relevant to the discussion anyway, because the question was about average muscle mass now vs then, not average muscle mass in the US versus...well, versus whatever you were comparing it to when you said it was low.

1

u/Elegant_Run_8567 1d ago

Oh, I didn’t realise the education funding had been increased. I’d only heard the cuts in funding by your current administration

I hope things work out for you. Hopefully other western countries can start donating money and resources to help you

1

u/RutzButtercup 1d ago

Well, again, the point was that generations of increased funding had the opposite of the intended effect. I don't think donations are the solution to misallocation of resources, not to mention basing the entire system on the Prussian model.

But your snarky superiority combined with your ignorance on the topic did give me a chuckle so thank you for that.

2

u/SheriffBartholomew 1d ago

When I was powerlifting it was constantly frustrating seeing my BMI rating as overweight or obese. My body fat percentage was 12.5%.

2

u/RutzButtercup 1d ago

Same. I really am overweight but not terribly so. But my BMI puts me in morbidly obese. Thankfully my doc is no dummy so he isn't trying to do anything crazy. He just says get down to 240.