Mexican body mass index values in the late-19th-century American West.

No research has been done on the body mass index values of the 19th-century Mexican population. This paper introduces a new data source of 19th-century Mexican male inmates in American prisons and finds that the majority of Mexican body mass was in the normal range (18.5-24.9). Few Mexicans were underweight or obese by modern standards. Body mass varied little (0-0.9 units) by occupations possibly because criminals probably came from the lower end of the socioeconomic distribution; however, it did vary with crimes for which inmates were incarcerated.