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The tallest people in the world, according to this article, are the Dutch.
quote:The Dutch as a whole are now the tallest people in the world, while Americans, who held that title for two centuries, stopped growing 50 years ago.
At the end of World War II, the average American male was nearly 5 foot 10, while the average Dutchman measured little more than 5 foot 7. But starting in the 1950s, the Dutch began shooting up, an average of almost an inch per decade, to the point that the average height for an adult Dutch male today is just under 6 foot 1.
A new survey that measured 10,000 Dutch schoolchildren confirms their status as the world's tallest and suggests that the growth trend will keep up for at least a decade. Scandinavians and other Northern Europeans experienced similar growth spurts. So have the once-short Japanese.
During the same period, Americans expanded horizontally but not vertically. The average height of the American male today is stuck at 5 feet 9 1/2 inches. U.S. women have actually lost a third of an inch and are on average slightly over 5 foot 4.
So why are Americans shrinking? Is it a change in diet and health care, a product of uneven economic distribution (as the article goes on to explore), or something genetic?
My thought first off was: Well, there are a lot more Mexican immigrants in the US now than there were after World War II, couldn't that racial difference be changing the average?
But it does point out that the Japanese are growing - and a Chinese friend of mine once told me that Chinese Americans are taller in subsequent generations because they start drinking milk when they live here.
So maybe what we thought was racial shortness is really just economic shortness. Maybe if the Japanese had grown up with dairy animals, they'd be just as tall as us. Maybe the Mexican immigrants really are shorter, not because of their Mixtec ancestors but because we keep them economically oppressed.
I'd like to think it's this simple, but then again, I've spent time in southern Mexico where people are of Zapotec heritage and are significantly shorter, though not significantly poorer, than northern Mexicans.
Hmmm.... any thoughts?
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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My Dad is 6'1". My mother is 5'6". My brothers are 6'5" and 6'. My sister is 5'11". I am a male and am 5'8". Go figure.
Posts: 279 | Registered: May 2004
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Huh. Well, the tallest woman that I know online (of those whose heights I know) is indeed Dutch . . . Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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Oh, and another thought that debunks ethnic reasons:
My Dad's family is of Dutch descent and of all my ancestors, they are by far the shortest and fattest. My brother and I are both rather tall, but wherever it comes from, it isn't our Dutch genes. Any tallness in our family is only seen in the German Jew line.
Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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My mother, grandmother, and great grandmother are/were all tall for women of their era, and of Dutch descent.
My husband's family is very tall, and they are of german-English descent.
All my kids' pediatricians are very tall. I have always thought that was weird. (they are not Dutch, though)
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I would say that a lot of it is probably due to demographics. We've seen a lot of immigration, unlike the Dutch, and especially from Asian countries (which, height-wise, have a ways to go to catch up.)
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But I am not sure if it is "catching up." I have heard that shorter people tend to live longer.
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I thought Eastern Europeans were ridiculously tall. My friend went to Czechoslovakia (I have no idea if that's spelled right) and he said that everyone there was over six and a half feet tall. Also the women were all gorgeous.
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My WASP father is 6'4'' and my Austro-English Jewish Mother is 5'7". I am 5'4". However, doctors have attributed my height to early puberty. I was my full adult height at 10 years old. My entire family was terrified that I would be 6' and never get married .
My husband's entirely Jewish family is very, very tall. His German-Polish father is 6' exactly, his Russian-Polish mother is 5'10" and his younger brother is 6'3". Andrew is 6'5". Both of his father's brothers are around 5'9", but his paternal grandfather was 6".
I am very curious about the height of our future child (which will most likely be a boy). Both Andrew and I obviously have tall genes, but you never know.
The people in Iceland were quite tall (and spectacularly beautiful). There were times where Andrew wasn't the tallest person in the room, which he loved. I always thought that Scandinavians tended to be taller than average.
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Mrs. M, I have heard it said, and I have also noticed it to work, that children will usually get their height from their mother's brother, and if there is no brother, look to your maternal uncle.
[ July 04, 2004, 02:37 PM: Message edited by: Elizabeth ]
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Andrew's mother only had a sister, who was also very tall. My maternal uncle is 6'.
Have they determined which gene determines height, I wonder? Maybe the Hatrack science types can tell us.
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It's not a single gene. There are genes that control maximum bone length; ones that determine how much HGH (human growth hormone) will be released, and for how long; and, um, some others that are relevant but I forget. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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According to the height chart, I should be 5'9". Stupid early puberty. My feet and head are both pretty big, too.
CT, wasn't it weird to go from being tall to being average? It was for me. I hated being the tallest in the class and taller than all the boys. They caught up to me in 6th grade and I was pretty happy, but then everyone passed me and I married a man more than a foot taller than me. Needless to say, I have a lot of heels.
Our future son's estimated height is 6'1.5". However, it estimates that Andrew and his brother should be that height, too. I remember my MIL telling me that she flipped out in the pediatrician's office when he told her that a child's height is double how tall he is at age 2. If that were the case, Andrew would be 6'10". Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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quote: My friend went to Czechoslovakia (I have no idea if that's spelled right) and he said that everyone there was over six and a half feet tall. Also the women were all gorgeous.
My wife is Czechoslovakian. And she is tall (5'11''). And I think she is gorgeous.
With a nice pair of heels, she is as tall or a bit taller than me! And I do confess, I have always been hopelessly attracted to tall women.
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I've finally figured out why CT doesn't like to there to exist photos of her.
It's because, having seen some, I know full well that her self-assessment is way off. Not "gazelle-like" indeed! Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I don't think CT answered, but I think her experience in terms of going from "tallest" to the shortie range is not uncommon in girls/young women. It was true of my ex, who hit puberty and achieved her full height at the age of ten or so. At 5' 6", she towered over her classmates for a couple years. By the end of high school, she was on the short range.
I'm 5' 1" and some change myself - it's probable that my height is due to a number of issues, one of which may be my hydrocephalus. For some reason, short stature is pretty common among people with the condition. No one is really sure why.
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When plants have limited sunlight, they produce gibberellin, which causes their cells to elongate and their stalks to grow really long and spindly, reaching for light.
This is why Scandinavians are so tall and Mexicans are so short! It's just a matter of sunlight accessibility.
I'm glad I've figured that out. Posts: 8504 | Registered: Aug 1999
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quote:You know, Stephen, I've never had my head imaged. You think, maybe ... ? *wonders
Hmmm... Thinks....
Here's the thing - most of us whose heads became enlarged as babies no longer have enlarged heads as adults. I've asked a couple physicians about this and they tended to misunderstand the nature of my question about the why of this, leading me to believe no one really understands why our bodies "caught up" with our heads. That means that for a time, our heads grew at a slower pace than the rest of our bodies. Like I said, I've asked a couple people if they understand the mechanism, and the response was to misunderstand the question (this is a not uncommon technique some physicians use to avoid saying "I don't know."). Not my current one, btw - he feels free to express when he thinks he's out of his depth.
The fact is some people just have big heads. Unless we want to pathologize everything below the fifth percentile and above the 95th, maybe we should just leave it at that.
Your feet, though, are another matter. Any chance there's a sasquatch lurking in the family tree? Posts: 4344 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I think I know this one... Asian peoples used to be shorter because of the limitations of a rice diet. When they got better diets -- and more complete proteins, they began to catch up.
Americans get TOO much protein, and that causes puberty to kick in earlier. The later you experience puberty (at least with girls), the taller you get, because once puberty kicks in you only grow "x" amount taller.
Puberty has been getting earlier and earlier for American girls because Americans eat too much protein. If I remember right, European girls experience puberty later. Early puberty is probably not a very healthy thing... especially not emotionally, to be having your hormones and your body developing so young, while you've got so much emotional and mental maturing to do yet...
Anyway, yeah, I definitely remember noticing all the tall Europeans when I visited Europe, and definitely noticed all the tall European women
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I went to a school of people who were mostly from the Nederlands, it was the Fries who were the tallest there. At 5'9" I felt short. The tallest guy I was familier with was 7'2"
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Considering that the most common combinations in Asian diets are rice with beans and/or tofu, I think you're wrong about the incomplete proteins, plaid. Now, that they get insufficient nutrition is likely true of far too many. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I'm 5'1", and the calculater said I could only be 5'2". Then the growth chart predicted I'd only be 5'1.1". Posts: 4174 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I'm 5'11. I've said it time and time again, it's tall enough to be annoying but not tall enough to sound tall. But I tower over my 5'0 mother and 5'2 father, frequently losing them in crowds, bookstores and tall grass. Makes me greatful for every inch I got.
Posts: 3243 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Every Scandanavian I've ever met was very tall, so I agree with the original article.
First one I met was this GORGEOUS blond, blued eye, 6'6" guy out in California, -- I don't remember if he was Dutch, or from Norway or Sweden. But he was just beautiful. So it gave me a very good impression of people from that region..... <grin>
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rivka, while they may have been getting enough protein to prevent malnutrition, I think the idea is that americans are eating excess protein. But it could be our high starch habits as well. If one isn't eating enough veggies and legumes, one is going to be overconsuming either protein or starch, both of which tax the pancreas.
The pancreas, in addition to insulin (which is required by sugar/starch) and glucagon (which is required by protein et. al.) also makes somatostatin which is the negative feedback mechanism for Growth Hormone (somatotrophin). One would think that inadequate somatostatin would lead to more growth, but if the imbalance is great enough the body could be scaling back on the Growth Hormone production so that all hell doesn't break loose, metabolically speaking. That is just one speculative scenario, something else that hasn't even been discovered yet could be to blame.
I'm looking at my body atlas again and somatostatin inhibits the insulin and glucagon production as a secondary effect. So if kids are eating a lot of chips and washing it down with pop, the pancreas may release somatostatin to calm the insulin spikes, but it would also be slowing down the growth. I don't know if the pancreas really responds in that way, just another speculation. I really think preponderance of starch and sugars is a bigger problem than excess protein for most kids.
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I'm 5'8", and the predictor said 5'7.5". That's close enough for me - I'm sold.
However, my brothers are all full-grown and are 5'6", 5'11", and 6'1" respectively. Makes no sense at all.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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Accoring to the height calculator, I should be 5'7". I'm only 5'4.75". I've been robbed of over 2 inches!!!
As a kid I was always the shortest. Usually by a long way, but I went through puberty kind of late and caught up to most of my friends along the way. I still think of myself as short, but I was suprised to read recently that I am slightly over the average height for american women.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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I've always been the short one. It was never a big deal to me - I'm maxed out at 5'2" on a good day. I hate heels, so that's not an option. I'm happy with being a shortie-pie. My hubby's 5'7" or 5'8". My mom is 5'.25", and my dad is 5'7". I'm essentially Irish-Texan. Mom's from Dublin, and my dad's family originated from Germany in the 1600s. My sister's best friend for the past 15 years was 6'3" in 5th grade. She's now 6'5", a blonde goddess, and when she visited Norway she said she'd "found her people." Maybe there's a little truth to this after all. I will add that I think that the American propensity for growing OUT and not UP is definitely a result of diet.
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Heh. Why is CT talking when I could be, in the full magnificence of my grand voice booming from my large chest and resounding from my great height?
There's a reason the Oompa-Loompas were Willy Wonka's bitches and not the other way around, y'know.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Was that an offer? I'll gladly inspect to ensure that it is, in fact, a magnificent chest -- I'll leave no stone unturned, no analogy unsuited for a Mormon forum unused.
Posts: 3293 | Registered: Jul 2002
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I really don't know my parents' heights--and in my dad's case, don't really have the opportunity to ask anymore. So the chart is useless to me. I think dad is a little taller than me, mom a little shorter. I might have grown taller if I hadn't had to have that back operation. When I was about eleven or twelve, I suddenly sprouted up half a foot in one week, and several of the men in mom's family are really tall instead of just looking like it because they're skinny.
That was, in fact, the beginning of the series of events that led to all those operations--a jump like that put a real strain on my body.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Sure, there's diet, genetics, and puberty timing. And then there are some of us that are just mutants.
My dad is 5'11", and my mom is 5'2". I tower over her at about 5'4". Both of my parents are mongrel northern Europeans (including, interestingly, a Dutch great-grandmother), and as far as I know, I ate more or less the same things as all of my classmates. I think I hit puberty at a fairly normal 13ish or so (at least that's the summer I remember everyone asking if I had a cold). My sisters are 5'4", 5'6", and 5'5". I have seven uncles, none of whom is under six feet (nor are any of their sons, I think).
So, as far as mutations go, it's not as cool as, say, super powers. But it's much cooler than most alternatives, I suppose.
Posts: 1068 | Registered: Aug 2000
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My wife is 3/4 Dutch. Her father, born in Holland just before WWII, is well over six feet tall. Her brother is also over six feet. Her grandfather, who immigrated to the U.S. with his family following the war, was also well over six feet, and that was after he was eighty and stooped. In addition, that whole family was severely malnourished during the war, and so my father-in-law and his siblings might not be as tall as they could have been if they had eaten well as children.
On the other hand, my wife's Dutch grandmother is one of the tiniest women I have ever met, and would be even without her stoop.
Why doesn't someone do a study showing that the Dutch are the stubbornest people in the world?
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