America Comes Up Short

Americans are losing the height wars, and of course it's the fault of Republicans and large fast food corporations:

"From colonial times until after the Second World War, Americans were the tallest people on Earth, as befitted the richest nation.

But European nations have overtaken them, according to a study. The Dutch are now the tallest and the Norwegians, Danish and Germans have also overtaken the Americans.

Why this should be is a puzzle, admit John Komlos, Professor of Economic History at the University of Munich, and Benjamin Lauderdale, of the Department of Politics at Princeton, reporting in Annals of Human Biology.

Professor Komlos suspects that it may have something to do with the junk food trend that hit the US before Europe. Alternatively, the more equitable healthcare systems of Western Europe may enable more people to reach their optimum height, while many poorer children in the US remain deprived."

According to the article, the stagnation of Americans' height is not explained by immigration trends because "comparison is made between Americans of European descent and their opposite numbers who remained in Europe". That aside, it's interesting how the authors assume that increased height is a good thing. Just like with girth (for which Americans still hold top honors), maybe it's not something to strive towards.

"During the last 30 years, several researchers have found a negative correlation between greater height and longevity based on relatively homogeneous deceased population samples. Findings based on millions of deaths suggest that shorter, smaller bodies have lower death rates and fewer diet-related chronic diseases, especially past middle age. Shorter people also appear to have longer average lifespans. The authors suggest that the differences in longevity between the sexes is due to their height differences because men average about 8.0% taller than women and have a 7.9% lower life expectancy at birth."

In addition to the improved life expectancy for those with short stature, there's also some evidence that extreme caloric restriction (which is a valid method for achieving the desired stunted growth), may also increase longevity:

"I’ve been starving for the past two months, actually, and that’s precisely what the party is about: My dinner guests—five successful urban professionals who for years have subsisted on a caloric intake the average sub-Saharan African would find austere—have been at it much, much longer, and I’ve invited them here to show me how it’s done. They are master practitioners of Calorie Restriction, a diet whose central, radical premise is that the less you eat, the longer you’ll live."

So.... besides the reduced energy consumption needed for food production, a country of shorter, semi-starved people would also use less energy for transportation (buses and planes would weigh less) and air conditioning.

Who will be the first brave politician to propose "rolling famines" to lessen our country's soaring energy and health care costs?

Comments

[Paul]

Perhaps they can have even/odd day famines. So if your birthday is on an odd day, you can only eat on odd days and if your birthday is on an even day, you can only eat on even days. That would work out well for people like myslef and all of the Mazur siblings that have odd birthdays because in a normal year there are 185 odd days and 180 even days. Plus we'd get Christmas and New Years.

[Marty]

And we could give our Dear Old Ma some of our food our food on the odd days.

[Paladin]

In related news... Maryland is considering *mandatory* HPV vaccinations for their young ladies.

Leave it to Big Brother to know what's best for us. Pfft.

[Army of Mom]

Hey Chris - I tagged you with a meme.

Sorry. Ok, not really, but it seemed like a polite thing to say.

[Scott]

I wonder if America's large number of immigrants from countries with poorer nutrition and hence shorter people has anything to do with it? Would a higher percentage of Asians and Latinos be enough to tilt the numbers a bit?

I'm generally skeptical of statistical comparisons between countries because the method of gathering data can be significantly different.

For instance, one study puported to show that Europeans had a far lower infant death rate but it was entirely due to the greater attention given in the U.S. to saving premature babies.

Similarly, China claims that residents of Shanghai have longer life spans than people in New York. While the average Chinese person's diet of rice, vegetables and relatively little red meat, and the widespread use of bicycles to get are certainly positive, the fact that they exclude millions of poor migrant laborers who aren't official "residents" but live in Shanghai and do all the dirty, dangerous work certainly has a lot to do with it.

[Marty]

Hey, Scott, welcome to Mazurland. According to Chris's post above:

According to the article, the stagnation of Americans' height is not explained by immigration trends because "comparison is made between Americans of European descent and their opposite numbers who remained in Europe".

Good point relative to most other studies, however.

[Scott]

Okay, a real "duh" moment on my part. Anything in there about American attention spans relative to the rest of the world?