OK, so how the heck did this question come into my mind?
I saw a picture of Henry Kissinger the other day. He’s 96, just four years away from 100. And, honestly, his posture has really declined and he looks quite heavy. If he lives to 100, I would think he is one of the heaviest people I’ve seen make it that long.
Any info on the heaviest, fattest person to live to 100? I have no idea if Kissinger will make it, but he has to be the heaviest person I’ve seen at 95+.
I don’t think Kissinger qualifies, because he’s actually undead and will be walking the earth forever.
For awhile, the oldest person alive was a 112-year-old sumo wrestler. I don’t know who holds the record now but it’s a fast-moving record. Now in his pictures he did not look that heavy but maybe, in his prime? Sumo wrestlers aren’t lightweights as a rule.
Interesting question.
FWIW, according to the NIH, having a BMI of 55-60 takes about 14 years off life expectancy.
But thats close to the same as the life expectancy lost by being a smoker or non-college educated. And lots of smokers have lived to 90+ (its not as common, but it happens). There have been smokers who lived over 100.
Theres also the fact that extremely fat people aren’t super common. I would assume only 1% of people have a BMI over 55 or so, which means their potential pool of super long living people is smaller. Plus obesity has really gone up in the last few decades, and a person who is 100 years old was born in 1919, when obesity was far less common. Point being, there are fewer old fat people because people didn’t used to be as fat.
Anyway, I have no idea. I’ve been googling phrases like ‘oldest 300 pound person’ and ‘oldest 400 pound person’ and not finding anything useful.
Very old people tend to be rather shrunken and spread; I think it’s hard to gauge someone’s obesity level in a shapeless coat like that.
This article indicates that the very old—i.e., age 95 and older, which has to include a lot of centenarians—tend not to have significantly healthier lifestyles than others.
For Kissinger, probably heaven won’t take him, and hell has too many germans/lawyers/diplomats already.
[Moderating]
A reminder, everyone: Joke answers aren’t appropriate until a serious effort has been made at answering the question.
The character actor Leon Askin was a pretty big guy, and he lived to be 97.
Really a good choice, looks like he was pretty big and that is pretty close.
Can anyone beat this?
Looking at this list of 27 famous people who have lived to 100, the only person I noted on the list who seemed to be on the heavier side was Olivia de Havilland (who is currently 103). She’s not fat, per se, but she’s not a skinny old lady, either.
Hard to say without actually comparing numbers on weight or waistline, but this gerontologist asserts
AFAICT, though, this is a well-known study from the 1970s whose uncritical acceptance of age estimates in somewhat isolated communities has been criticized.
[nitpick]The oldest living man. There are older women alive.[/nitpick]
Kissinger isn’t German, he’s Jewish. Being born in Germany doesn’t make a person German, and that’s German law. Anyway, Kissinger is currently a US citizen.
He also does not look obese to me in that picture. He looks seriously stooped-- practically humpbacked, and like he’s trying to hide it with a coat that is too large. I know a guy who had normal posture until he was 70 or so, then started to become bent over. By the time he died, at like 96, he was L-shaped. Surprisingly, he could walk pretty swiftly, and without a cane, but couldn’t stand up straight. Surgery could have brought him up to about 165 degrees (if perfectly upright is 180, and his current posture was 90), but he had a heart condition, and couldn’t find anyone to do what was essentially elective surgery on him.
If this had happened after Botox was invented, that could have helped him a little, but it wouldn’t have repaired his blown discs.
Masazo Nonaka.
If funny enough, joke answers are always appropriate. IMHO.
He can’t be both? Really? That would seem to contradict the historical record.
He’s an American of German birth. Given that he fled Germany with his family at the age of 15 because the entire state apparatus was bent on killing people like him, I think calling him “German” instead of “a German-born American” or some such would be somewhat misleading.
He was born Heinz Alfred Kissinger. Fled in 1938. Was part of the invading US Army in 1945.
So…yes?
As an aside, I once read about a US unit in the 1970’s which was celebrating its anniversary calling up veterans. The Vietnam guys were fit as was expected. The WW2 and Korea guys wore their medals on civilian dress as they had all experienced middle age spread. The WW1 guts came last and once again fit into their uniforms.
It’s US short-hand to talk of someone, even someone a long-term naturalized citizen, in terms of their country of birth, or ancestry. The Kennedys are “Irish” even though they’re generations from Ireland. Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Austrian governor of California (even though he’d been a naturalized US citizen for decades at that point). The current First Lady of the US is Solvenian (and an American citizen married to the current PotUS) It’s a fairly common and well-understood convention in the US.
So? While the Nazis might have revoke citizen status from his family, when he was born in the the 1920’s in the Wiemar Republic weren’t he and his family German citizens?
It’s the story of a lot of people born in Germany around the same time as Kissinger. Like, say, Albert Einstein.
Santa Claus is notably corpulent. There is documentation of him having been so for well over 100 years.
