As soon as I saw the headline, I thought to myself "well yeah, Americans have also never been fatter," so the conclusion wasn't much of a surprise. Interesting that it's affecting men so much more.

This isn't the only study that indicates fatness is impacting aggregate performance, either. The US DoD has actually identified American obesity as a potential threat to national security and readiness. [1][2]

[1] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/policy-dose/articles/20... [2] (PDF) http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a547350.pdf