Another shocker! Americans Growing OUT, Not Up

Over at Newsweek today, I read that, “Americans are now among the shortest and fattest people in the industrialized world.” This according to a new Johns Hopkins study.

Despite our shortening, fattening the lines at McDonald’s just keep on lengthening (the fast food chain turned in its best quarter in three years driven by surging same-store sales, including growth as high as 5 percent in the US, reports Reuters). Actually, that’s about right. The lines there should be growing as we devolve into God-knows-what.

Also in the Johns Hopkins report, we find that 66 percent of American adults are fat (overweight or obese) and by 2015, 75 percent will have that distinguished distinction.

We’re getting (relatively) shorter, too. Since Colonial times -- George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, the Federalist Papers and all that -- Americans have been the “globe’s giants.” But these days, when Jack climbs the beanstalk, he finds himself in the Netherlands, where the average man is 6 feet tall, and women are 5 foot 7 (that’s 2 inches taller, for both sexes, than us Yanks).

Also beating the US are a bunch of socialist countries with something called “universal health care” (whatever that is), you know, countries like Belgium, Germany, all Scandinavian countries and Canada.

The US is still the richest country, you know. So why aren’t we taller, healthier? Well, Americans don’t like to share their money. According to the report, “he U.S. health-care system, as well as the relatively weak welfare safety net, might be why human growth in the United States has not performed as well in relative terms as one would expect on the basis of income alone.”