Variation in the body mass index among young adult Polish males between 1965 and 1995

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether the incidence of overweight and underweight individuals among young adults showed inter-generation changes or social-class differences in Poland between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s. DESIGN: Comparisons of variation in the body mass index and in height among 79-y-old Polish mates drawn from three successive birth cohorts. SUBJECTS: Three 10% nation wide random samples of 19-y-old Polish conscripts, examined in 1965, 1986 and 1995, a total of ca. 80,000 individuals. MEASUREMENTS: Body mass index (weight (kg)/height (m(2)) and height (m)). PRINCIPAL RESULT: There has been during the three decades between the mid-1960s and mid-1990s a gradual and significant increase in the proportion of both 'overweight' and of 'underweight' young males, as well as of the very tall and very short ones in the population. CONCLUSION: The above finding seems intriguing. It may suggest that certain elements of individual lifestyles, those influencing the leanness vs fatness variation among young adults, as well as those affecting growth in height, have tended to become in Poland increasingly diversified in terms of between-family differences, irrespective of social-class differeces and of the general nationwide changes in living standards.