Major League Baseball players have become overwhelmingly overweight and obese during the last quarter century, say health researchers. David E. Conroy, Penn State professor of kinesiology, and colleagues looked at 145 years of data on professional baseball players' body mass. The researchers found that the athletes' weight held steady for more than 100 years, with the majority of them weighing in at what is considered "normal," — i.e., with a body mass index (BMI) between 18.5 and 24.9. However, around 1991 the average player's BMI began to rise, and over the last 25 years nearly 80 percent of players fall into the overweight or obese category with a BMI above 25. Obesity in the general U.S. population began to rise in the mid-1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The researchers used the publicly available Lahman Baseball Database, where players' height, weight and age are recorded for their debut year in Major League Baseball. The data were self-reported, however Conroy points to the trend of players' increasing weight as informative — and cause for some concern. The rise coincides with baseball's steroid era, and steroids are known to cause weight gain in some. But the rise also lines up with advances in sports science and nutrition, which have enabled athletes to better train and fuel, helping them build muscle and endurance — which could lead to weight gain as well. http://news.psu.edu/story/428790/20...besity-rate-soars-among-professional-baseball
