I’m not sure we needed this level of technology to confirm that people are getting bigger:
TC2, a company based in the Raleigh suburb of Cary, used light-pulsing, 3-D scanner technology to measure some 10,000 Americans of all ages and ethnicities. The SizeUSA survey confirmed that all those extra french fries have come with a price.The study was funded by clothing manufacturers, the military and colleges and universities, all of whom have a keen interest in body sizes.
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The last such survey of Americans’ bodies was in 1941, and it was a low-tech undertaking, involving measuring tapes.TC2′s technology involves a 3-D measurement system in which four strategically placed cameras register more than 200,000 data points on the body. The data are then fed into measurement software that spits out 200 accurate body measurements in less than a minute.
I’d never heard any objective measurements associated with women’s clothing sizes before:
Size 8 has long been thought to represent the measurements of the average American woman. In the clothing industry, a size 8 officially is supposed to be a 35-inch bust, a 27-inch waist, and 37 1/2-inch hip.But in the survey, white women ages 18 to 25 came in, on average, at 38-32-41, with white women ages 36 to 45 coming in at 41-34-43.