Having been a man in the 60's, I can tell you that people (men and women) were a lot thinner than they are today.
yes i just read about it:
The average American woman weighs 166.2 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As reddit recently pointed out, that's almost exactly as much as the average American man weighed in the early 1960s.
Men, you're not looking too hot in this scenario either. Over the same time period you gained nearly 30 pounds, from 166.3 in the 60s to 195.5 today
Overall weight gain since 1960 is slightly greater for women (18.5 percent) than for men (17.6 percent). And both sexes have gained roughly an inch in height over the same period, which accounts for some of that weight gain.
But story is mostly one of growing girth, and it basically boils down to three factors: we're eating less healthy food, we're eating more of it, and we're not moving around as much