American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Vol 13, 318-325, Copyright © 1963 by The American Society for Clinical Nutrition, Inc.

Weight-Height Relationship of Young Men and Women

¹ From the Human Nutrition Research Division, U. S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.

The weight-height analysis of data from about 160,000 college students indicated that weight was relatively stable between ages twenty-one and twenty-nine years for men and between ages seventeen and twenty-nine years for women. Therefore, these ages were used to establish the average weight-height relationship for adults. The relative rate of increase in weight (in kilograms) is about 1 per cent per cm. height for both men and women although for any given height, the weight of women is about 9 per cent less than that for men.

From this average weight-height relationship, six classifications for characterizing gross body size (without reference to skeletal size, muscle mass or adipose tissue) were developed for use in classifying subjects for nutritional studies. Numerical values for average weight for height and for the boundary lines for the six classifications are presented.

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