Nutrition and healthcare make West Europeans taller than Americans

[cryofan]

Research is showing that Americans are now about 3-4 inches shorter than NW European residents of the social democracies. THis is mainly due to better nutrition and universal healthcare. The studies took into account such things as race, immigrants, etc. The studies looked at height and life expectancy at many countries for hundreds of years.
Fascinating, lengthy, detailed article!

Some excerpts:



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In the nineteenth century, when Americans were the tallest people in the world, the country took in floods of immigrants. And those Europeans, too, were small compared with native-born Americans. Malnourishment in a mother can cause a child not to grow as tall as it would otherwise. But after three generations or so the immigrants catch up. Around the world, well-fed children differ in height by less than half an inch. In a few, rare cases, an entire people may share the same growth disorder. African Pygmies, for instance, produce too few growth hormones and the proteins that bind them to tissues, so they can’t break five feet even on the best of diets. By and large, though, any population can grow as tall as any other.

This last point may sound counterintuitive. Height, like skin color, seems to vary with geography: we think of squat Peruvians, slender Masai, stocky Inuit, and lanky Brazilians. According to Bergmann’s Rule and Allen’s Rule, animals in cold climates tend to have larger bodies and shorter limbs than those in warm climates. But though climate still shapes musk oxen and giraffes—and a willowy Inuit is hard to find—its effect on industrialized people has almost disappeared. Swedes ought to be short and stocky, yet they’ve had good clothing and shelter for so long that they’re some of the tallest people in the world. Mexicans ought to be tall and slender. Yet they’re so often stunted by poor diet and diseases that we assume they were born to be small.

Holland’s growth spurt began only in the mid-eighteen-hundreds, Drukker found, when its first liberal democracy was established. Before 1850, the country grew rich off its colonies, but the wealth stayed in the hands of the wealthy, and the average citizen shrank. After 1850, height and income suddenly fell into lockstep: when incomes went up, heights went up (after a predictable lag time), and always to the same degree. “I thought I must have made an error,” Drukker said. “I must have correlated one of the variables with itself.” He hadn’t. Holland, like the rest of Northern Europe, had simply managed to spread its prosperity around. These days, Dutch heights no longer keep pace with the economy. (“We can’t grow to four metres just because our income quadruples,” Drukker says.) But the essential equation is the same: when the G.N.P. grows, everyone grows.

As America’s rich and poor drift further apart, its growth curve may be headed in the opposite direction, Komlos and others say. The eight million Americans without a job, the forty million without health insurance, the thirty-five million who live below the poverty line are surely having trouble measuring up. And they’re not alone. As more and more Americans turn to a fast-food diet, its effects may be creeping up the social ladder, so that even the wealthy are growing wider rather than taller. “I’ve seen a similar thing in Guatemala,” Bogin says. “The rich kids are taken care of by poor maids, so they catch the same diseases. When they go out on the street, they eat the same street food. They may get antibiotics, but they’re still going to get exposed.”

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much more here:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040405fa_fact

[prodigal_green]

1. Wow, who knew

that our system really bought that old song, "short people"

[bobbieinok]

2. good grief!!!!!!!!!!