The Advantage of a Good Diet

America was a good place to live in the eighteenth century. Game was abundant, land free for the clearing, settlement sparse enough to prevent epidemics. Even the runaway slaves are said to be sixty eight inches tall, and white colonists masters stand sixty nine inches — a full three inches taller than the average European of the time.

By the end of the nineteenth century, the economy was expanding at a dramatic rate, and public-hygiene campaigns were sweeping the cities clean at last: for the first time in American history, urbanites began to outgrow farmers.

Then something strange happened. While heights in Europe continued to climb, "the U.S. just went flat." Americans didn't grow taller for fifty years. By now, even the Japanese—once the shortest industrialized people on earth — have nearly caught up with us, and Northern Europeans are three inches taller and rising.

The Race to Be Taller

The Height of Americans 1930 - 1980

The Modern Diet is Poorer

The most likely culprit for this decline is that child health in the United States has worsened compared to other developed countries. One study found that Americans grow less during infancy and late adolescence than their North European counterparts, which points to a comparative weakness in the diets of American children.