Is a Lack of Doing Housework Chores Making Today’s Women Fat?

A study undertaken by University of South Carolina researchers that seems to indicate a lack of household chores is a factor in the country's obesity rate.

ABC News reports that a team of University of South Carolina researchers at the Arnold School of Public Health compared the activity logs kept by stay-at-home women from 1965 until today and found that in 1965, women spent 25.7 hours a week vacuuming (with equipment much heavier than the vacuums in use today., dusting, mopping, cooking and washing.

In 2010, women were averaging 13.3 hours a week on household chores.

The question is, does that reduction in chores account for the extra 22 pounds that women now average in weight?

The study's lead author, Dr. Edward Archer, says the study isn't meant to suggest that women are heavier sole due to less time spent doing chores. 

"The premise of the study is that humans have engineered activity out of every domain of daily life ... from the workplace to the home ... but we are not suggesting that women should be doing more housework," Archer told CNN.

He said the same innovations that have given us more free time are also causing us to burn less calories.

"Our 'world' no longer necessitates moderate or intense physical activity. Therefore, women (and men) need to allocate more time to deliberate exercise to overcome the decrement in daily activity," he said.

Some are questioning not only the study's findings, but it's backer: The study was commissioned by Coca-Cola.

“It would be like taking money from the tobacco industry to find other causes of lung cancer. It really makes no sense at all,” Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for food policy and obesity at Yale University, told ABC News. It also doesn’t explain the large increase in weight in the American male.

A CDC study found the average height of women increased from just over 5’3” in 1960 to 5’4” in 2002 for a corresponding 24.1-pound increase in weight. During this same period, American men grew to an average height of 5’ 9 1/2” from 5’8” in 1960 and gained an average 24.7 pounds. So what’s the reason there?

What do you think of this study? A possible reason for American women gaining weight in the last 45 years? Or just a possible contributor — along with some of those sugar-loaded sodas?

Tell us in the comments!