I think, politely, this perspective misses the forest for the trees (or maybe the trees for the forest).

Out of the approx. 250 million adult americans, a large cross section do manage their health.

While average outcome might be better in the UK, it's useless to lump the 60% (150 million) of americans who are not obese in with the 40% (100 million) who are obese. And while this is easily the most major, it is just one measure of health.

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gcanyon 5 days ago | parent [-]

As an anecdote, I saw just this morning plastic adirondack chairs for sale outside a grocery store, and they had a large sticker on them proclaiming in 4-inch lettering that they are rated for 350 pounds(!). That says something sad about the U.S.

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Theodores 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

As an aside, I am amazed that chairs can be sold without some redundancy, in case of breakage. 350 pounds is not exceptional these days, that is only 160Kg, which is only 90 Kg more than what I weigh with clothes, cup of tea and plate of food... 80Kg is reasonable for a healthy person and two people should be supportable by the chair.

However, chairs get left outside and they can rot. This can lead to collapse even if a 50Kg person gets on. This can be incredibly dangerous. Hence every chair should have a secondary support structure, in some cases this can be wire under tension, other times it might have to be steel tubing.

There are thousands of chair designs, none of them built for the ultimate eventuality of catastrophic failure.

	▲	LorenPechtel 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		No. There's a big difference between the load limit printed on something and it's true expected failure point. As somebody could be hurt by the chair failing I would expect the real strength to be in the ballpark of 3,000 pounds or even more. Figuring the permissible % of expected yield point is handled by the engineers, normally not by the end users. Load ratings near the failure point are only done when the failure will not cause a problem, or when the failure is actually a desirable property (breakaway tethers of various types.)

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LorenPechtel 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

And is that really so horrible? I would not own a chair flimsy enough that my wife couldn't sit on my lap when I was sitting in the chair.

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dylan604 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> That says something sad about the U.S.

That a lot of couples like to share the same chair??