The Average American Man Is Too Fat for Universal’s New Mario Kart Ride | Hacker News Reader

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

thedrive.com

51 pointsclouddrover54 comments

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 daughter is getting to be the height where she can ride upside-down rides, I'm going to caution her that she needs to be aware that being tall enough isn't always enough, and to be cognizant of whether the bar comes down securely across her (very skinny) body.

The article says it's a slow VR ride, though, so doesn't sound like you'd have the same concerns as, say, a roller coaster or log flume ride.

> 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.

It likely had nothing to do with lifestyle choices, and more to do with who their target audience is.

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.

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)

In case I can save anyone a click, there isn’t a single sentence of that article worth reading.

The author simply fails to understand that BMI is a helpful indicator for population metrics, and contorts into crazy positions to fill out a “top 10” list

Sorry, I think pretty much all those reasons are bogus. Yes, 100% agree that, as I said, it isn't a good metric for individuals, and I also agree that the actual calculation is weird - at the end of the day it's still just a ratio of height to weight.

But all of this nonsense nitpicking about bone density vs muscle vs fat is irrelevant when using it to look at large population cohorts over time. Looking at weight vs height is a good, easily calculable metric without needing to put everyone in a float tank.

The US BMI has skyrocketed over the past 50 years solely because we've gotten a ton fatter. There have also been plenty of corroborating studies that we've also gotten a ton weaker, e.g. studies that look at average grip strength.

Any studies in particular of interest on the strength metrics over time?

https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/06/13/4815909...

There are links to the source study in that article.

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.

if you're 5'9" / 200lbs you'd better be a powerlifter to be considered fit.

not necessarily. some people are stocky but not that fat either. Former high school or college football players would fit the bill, or people who do manual labor.

Football strength training is basically powerlifting[1].

[1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7116789-the-strongest-sh...

If you’re the type of person where BMI is irrelevant, you’ll know. But the average American is not doing 300 lb bench presses, and the average person doing 300 lb bench presses is also aware that BMI is meaningless for their case but a somewhat fair reference for others.

You need to go for a walk to do some people-watching if you think there's an epidemic of lean Americans with bulging muscles. Visit a Walmart.

CDC's usage of BMI is what it was designed for: To measure populations/as a generalization.

Your retort is something people repeat, because they don't seem to grasp that originally the point of the retort was when people are using BMI to discuss individuals (wrong) rather than populations (correct). This is the correct usage.

But ultimately there's little data supporting the supposition that Americans have so much muscle they're incorrectly categorized via BMI over population level samples, whereas there is plenty of data suggesting that since the 1970s and the subsidization of corn-created sugar, that Americans have gained body fat.

I assure you that that the average American male hasn’t been getting increasingly shredded.

BMI may not apply well to you individually, but you can look around and see that there’s a worsening problem that aggregate BMI trends seem to capture.

> 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...

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

Is disagreeing with someone a really a reason to downvote them?

Lol, your average American is 200 pounds of muscle. Right

That sounds like a South Park joke, « I ain’t fat, I’m athletic »

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

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

"The result is unsurprising if you know the result"

Not at all surprising if you spend any time outside of your house in America.

The data implies most people don't spend much time outside.

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 households have more than $7000 in credit card debt" if the average household credit card debt was found to be $7,486 like it was earlier this year: https://thehill.com/finance/3821799-a-growing-number-of-amer.... That would sound wrong to me, and it is.

That’s exactly it. The average gets pulled out of proportion by outliers, so there’s a good chance that far more than 50% of US American man can ride it.

It isn't getting skewed, it is simply being different than the median. Very common in statistics.

What?

Expecting a gaussian distribution everywhere. For instance in dead pixels in monitors. Say that most have no dead pixels but there are 1000 with one dead pixel. Should there be 1000 with an extra pixel?

I don’t understand what you are saying. The article says 50% of men. I said with the average, there is no need for it to be 50%, with the median there would be. I have no idea how what you say is related to that.

> The average gets pulled out of proportion by outliers

This places a value judgment on the mean not being close to the median

No, it simply says there’s a chance. That is what this whole subthread was about, and you argued against it for some inexplicable reason. But now I see you even edited your original comment to say you misunderstood, so I’m thinking you are just arguing for the sake of it.

The article says:

“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.”

If “average” means “mean”, then clearly this reasoning is broken.

Ah, they expanded poorly on it. They also say that again a paragraph above that. Chalk one up for https://norvig.com/reporters-and-parrots.html Maybe ChatGPT is already capable of replacing human parroting...

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

Yes, this keeps coming up on HN. It's a bimodal distribution, so if 85% of the population can ride on your ride, it's still a solid business proposition.

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 (the 40.5 inches in the OP), while the 50th percentile is actually lower at 101.8 (39.7 inches).

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

Distributions are available here:

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03-046-508.pdf

Median male adult weight: 192.6 pounds

"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."

I am in disbelief, I'm pretty obese but looks like I'm under the mean.

To me is the opposite: like i know im obese and working on it, but my waist at the belly button is about 120cm and I have never found a seat I dont fit in. And I fly Ryanair all the time.

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.

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 is? How much bigger will people get? A lot of engineering is based on the assumption that most humans fit within a certain distribution of weight, having to constantly raise this mean incurs many unforeseen costs and consequences.

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.

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!

Most pants sit way below the waist, though. Pants labeled 38 might fit just fine on someone with a 38 waist even though the actual measurement of the pants is larger, because they are sitting far down on the hips.

Sure, but the numbers aren’t true to that either. It’s called vanity sizing and it’s been around for decades.

It’s not even a crazy thing. People just want a way to know what to buy at the store, so the numbers are more a matter of tradition than anything.

“34” people like to buy “34” or are maybe comfortable moving on to “36” or “38” as they age and willfully let themselves go. Regardless of where fashion has the waistline fall this year, or how bodies are transforming, the product strategy involves putting the right number on the right fit.

Damn, and our penises are concerning large. [0]

[0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.miamiherald.com/news/nation...

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