And also, the definition of obese was changed in 1998. http://www.cnn.com/HEALTH/9806/17/weight.guidelines/
Where obesity is defined as body fat percentages, people of normal weight but low muscle are obese. When Thin Is Fat — If Not Managed, Normal Weight Obesity Can Cause Health Issues
I deeply question obesity statistics. Through most of human history, we had no method to weigh ourselves. Back when President Taft got stuck in a bath tub, people might weigh themselves on public freight scales or at a penny arcade, a notion so unappealing that scale owners had to gamify it with fortunes, guess your weight games, and other enticements. Home scales didn’t really arrive until around 1910. The price then was $10, which in 2018 is $265. So it likely took a while for most homes to have a scale. https://timeline.com/bathroom-scale-fat-shame-94f1591c49c7
People also didn’t visit their doctor much and the piece cited above suggests that doctors recommended that people use public freight scales.
So what accurate data do we have to objectively show that people have gotten heavier and more obese in the long run? There simply isn’t a long public health record of weight. We have better climate and weather data than we do public health data.
