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May 2, 2020 07:34 pm

Aggregate Data From Connected Scales Shows Minimal Weight Gains During Lockdowns

"Data from connected scale users suggests Americans, on average, are not gaining weight during lockdowns," writes long-time Slashdot reader pfhlick. The Washington Post reports:Withings, the maker of popular Internet-connected scales and other body-measurement devices, studied what happened to the weight of some 450,000 of its American users between March 22 — when New York ordered people home — and April 18. Despite concerns about gaining a "quarantine 15," the average user gained 0.21 pounds during that month... Over the same March-April period in 2019, Withings said its American users gained slightly less weight — 0.19 pounds on average — though fewer people had the scales last year... Dariush Mozaffarian, dean of the School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University — who wasn't involved with the Withings analysis — said he found the results a bit disappointing. "With the shutdown of the restaurants, I thought the numbers would have gotten better," he said. Home-cooked meals tend to be healthier than dining out. Withings' numbers varied slightly for other countires. But citing a professor of medicine at Stanford, the article notes that average weight gains may be misleading, since some people "may be hitting their groove during stay-at-home orders by embracing cooking and taking up jogging. But others could be using food to cope with stress and gaining large amounts of weight." In fact, 37% of the scale owners gained more than a pound. (Which, if my math is correct, suggests that the other 63% had to lose at least .13 pounds.) The article also notes that for buyers of Withings' scales, "contributing aggregate data is a condition included in its terms of service; its customers don't get the option to opt out if they want to use Withings products."

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