Before the Obesity Epidemic: The Body Mass Index of Canadians in the First and Second World Wars

Enlistment medical examinations indicate that Canadian soldiers in the Second World War had a lower Body Mass Index (BMI), or weight adjusted for height, than soldiers in the First World War. This evidence, if representative of Canadian society more generally, implies either that the long-run trend to increasing obesity in Canada did not begin until after 1945 or that the generation that came of age between 1914-1939 had particularly challenging socio-economic experiences. The patterns visible for Quebec differ insofar as BMI was initially lower and remained roughly the same from one war to the other.