Are people getting taller and taller ...?

[online.education]

If you examine skeletons of those who died hundreds of years ago and thousands of years ago, you find that people are getting taller and taller. Now is this trend expected to continue ...?

[Michelle]

I read that we've (humans in general, although maybe not us in particular!) have been taller for the past few generations because of improved nutrition due to the Industrial Revolution and better availability of food, but now that we're eating so much junk and processed foods average heights are going down again in America. So I guess it depends on whether people's diets improve.

[online.education]

Originally Posted by Michelle

... but now that we're eating so much junk and processed foods average heights are going down again in America. So I guess it depends on whether people's diets improve.

Can you cite the source?

I was able to find only the following …

In the 18th and 19th centuries, Europeans in North America were far taller than those in Europe. In fact, they were the tallest in the world. The original indigenous population of Plains Indians was also among the tallest populations of the world at the time. Several nations, including many nations in Europe, have now surpassed the US, particularly the Netherlands, and the Scandinavian nations.

In the late nineteenth century, the Netherlands was a land renowned for its short population, but today it has the 2nd tallest average in the world, with young men averaging 183 cm (6 ft) tall and only shorter than the peoples of the Dinaric Alps (Montenegro, Herzegovina, Coastal Croatia) and coastal and hinterland Croatia ), where males average 186 cm (6 ft 1.1 in) tall. The Dinarians and Dutch are now well known in Europe for extreme tallness. In Africa, the Maasai, Dinka and Tutsi populations are known for their tallness.

Average male height in impoverished Vietnam and North Korea remains comparatively small at 163 cm (5 ft 4 in) and 165 cm (5 ft 5 in), respectively. Currently, young adult North Korean males are actually significantly shorter. This contrasts greatly with the extreme growth occurring in surrounding Asian populations with correlated increasing standards of living. Young South Koreans are about 8 cm (3 inches) taller than their North Korean counterparts, on average. There is also an extreme difference between older North Koreans and young North Koreans who grew up during the famines of the 1990s-2000s; there is virtually no height difference among North Korean and South Korean adults older than 40, who came of age at a time when the North's economy was on a par with that of the South.

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