A Weighty Issue: Diminished Net Nutrition Among the U.S. Working Class in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Much has been written about the modern obesity epidemic, and historical BMIs are low compared with their modern counterparts. However, interpreting BMI variation is difficult because BMIs increase when weight increases or when stature decreases, and the two have different implications for human health. An alternative measure for net current nutritional conditions is body weight. After controlling for height, I find that African American and white weights decreased throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Farmers had greater average weights than workers in other occupations. Individuals from the South had taller statures, greater BMIs, and heavier weights than workers in other U.S. regions, indicating that even though the South had higher disease rates in the nineteenth century, it had better net nutritional conditions.

Mexican and Hispanic Net Nutrition in the 19th Century American West

“…Mexicans residing in New Mexico had greater weights than other Mexicans living in the US. However, Mexican complexion was not related to weight, and Mexican weight increases with age were modest (Figure 6); lower Mexican weights at older ages were also similar to weight decreases with age experienced by African-Americans in the 19 th century US (Carson, 2015b) that Mexican workers did not receive excess dietary allocations and were at the bottom of the net nutritional distribution.…”

Nineteenth-century White Physical Activity, Calories and Life Expectancy: Nutrition, Sanitation or Medical Intervention?

“…360–369; Comer, 2000, p. 1314;). An individual’s weight is the most responsive variable in Mifflin equations to the immediate effects of changes in the physical environment; consequently, the decrease in weight is related the most to the decrease in physical activity and energy requirements (Figures 2 and 3; Carson, 2015, pp. 953–955).…”

“…However, Komlos and Brabec (2016) suggest failing to account for patriotism with military recruits is itself a source of bias. Moreover, the Bodenhorn, Guinine, and Mroz view is yet to be supported by empirical tests (Zimran, 2015; Komlos & A’Hearn, 2016), and may not account for decreasing BMI and weight values (Carson, 2009b, 2012, 2015).…”

Changing Institutions, Changing Net Nutrition: A Difference-in-Decompositions Approach to Understanding the U.S. Transition to Free-Labor

“…BMI has been shown to be a robust measure for mortality risk (Koch, 2011;Waaler, 1984), and later life chronic health conditions may be related to malnutrition and inadequate calories relative to energy required throughout life (Fogel, 1994). As the ratio of weight to height, BMI represents the lagged or mismatched effect of the timing of privation and may not be as good of measure for current net nutrition as weight after controlling for height (Carson, 2015b(Carson, , 2017Gluckman & Hanson, 2006;Schneider, 2017). 1 Average BMI varies when there is an imbalance between calories consumed and calories required for physical activity and to withstand the physical environment.…”