As a tall Dutch man who has been dragged into this conversation a lot, it is interesting to note that only 150 years ago, the Dutch were the shortest nationality in Europe. To me this means that nutrition has a massive effect on growth. In fact, regular food in Dutch supermarkets is supposedly the most cost-effective fresh food on the planet, ie quality/freshness vs price. I wouldnt be surprised if the growth in relative length of the Dutch correlated with the increased centralization of commerce through the port of Rotterdam (and thus provide access to lots of fresh produce quickly, compared to countries "down the rivers".
I think women liking tall men is pretty much universal which would lead to them getting taller and taller though evolution. As they men aren't all extra tall there are presumably counter factors like tall people needing more food in famines or having back problems I'd imagine. I heard someone say the average Frenchman used to be taller but Napoleon put a lot of the tall ones in his army and then lost them in battle.
Height has definitely transcended other physical traits like physical strength in terms of hunter-gatherer advantageous traits.
Women still prefer many of these physical traits, but probably not as much as wealth, which is linked to intelligence, which comes by default with age.
So you have to factor in what traits are conducive to wealth accumulation, and the easiest and biggest one is probably longevity. If you can be an older, wealthier male with his shit together, that's probably one of the bigger factors over height.
It's important to note that women's preferences is not the only thing affecting evolution - shorter men can be selected due to higher survival rates (for example in jungles, as another commenter pointed out).
Personally, I find the Dutch diet to be pretty unadventurous and poor. Sandwiches predominate, with not a lot of variety in cooking. This may well be irrelevant to the OP; nothing but cheese sandwiches and sour buttermilk may well be the perfect diet for growing tall.
As for the Rotterdam argument, I suspect fresh food would have to be flown in rather than shipped, which takes weeks.
> nothing but cheese sandwiches and sour buttermilk
It's better than hamburgers an coke, or fish and chips and beer, I guess. Which are just as much b.s. stereotypical views of US and British diets as yours is of a Dutch diet.
Oxfam doesn't seem to agree with you, and ranks The Netherlands as having the best diet [1]. Dutch cuisine might not be very diverse (boiled potatoes, boiled veggies and some meat), but the Dutch eat a lot of food from other cuisines; pasta and rice dishes are very popular in the Netherlands.
Dutch food is the worst. The Dutch think of eating as a chore. When was the last time you went out for Dutch food? There's a reason the answer is never.
>> Dutch food is the worst
>> When was the last time you went out for Dutch food? There's a reason the answer is never.
These two statements I can somewhat agree with, typical Dutch food isn't very special, all we have that could have some appeal is erwtensoep (pea soup) and pannenkoeken (dutch pancakes).
>> The Dutch think of eating as a chore
This is just plain and utter BS though, you couldn't be further from the truth with that statement. You see, Dutch people don't typically cook or go out for 'Dutch food'. Even the smallest towns have a variety of international restaurants and cuisine, supermarkets have a rich selection of international ingredients, cities are littered with shops that sell oriental ingredients, etc.
Tradionally, foods that are popular here (both to eat out or to cook) have always been very varied: indonesian, chinese, oriental/middle-eastern, carribean (suriname, antilles), european (french, italian, spanish), etc. This is probably because of the large cultural diversity of people living here, who brought their food tradition with them.
Of all the countries I've traveled to, the diversity of good food you can have is probably highest in the Netherlands. Compared to for example the US, where food and restaurants (even the expensive ones) are almost universally terrible, the eating culture over here is magnificent. Other countries usually have great food, but less diversity. This all adds up to a dining culture where 'the dutch think of eating as a chore' is an almost absurdist statement. People here like to cook and eat out, restaurants don't try to race you through 3 mediocre courses, straight to the check in the shortest time possible, like in the US, families or friends take time to eat together to socialize, etc. Eating is anything but 'a chore' for most people I know of...
When was the last time you went out for danish, swedish or finnish food? These countries are small and their food isn't known around the world, but that does not mean that it's bad.
Even living in the Netherlands, I've yet to see a restaurant where you can actually order typical Dutch foods, eg. the mentioned boiled/mashed potatoes + meat + veggies or stamppot [1]
True, you do get that a lot. Restaurant have nicer presentation than me and my mother do, I considered that more towards French cuisine [1] somehow.
I've never seen something like wortelstamp/hutspot (mash of potatoes and carrots) with a smoked sausage in any restaurant.
That, to me at least, is the epitome of the Dutch kitchen.
Dutch pancakes are delicious. I never would have thought to try savory pancakes with ham and cheese before I went to Amsterdam and visited a pancake house.
Yes, but they are the best sandwiches I've ever had anywhere. The Dutch treat every sandwich like a little work of art, I've had countless since visiting the Netherlands that made me wish other countries knew what they were doing!
The strong emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables (and fresh mint tea, which is as common as water in Holland) is also really nice compared to the greasy, messy, fatty foods of the U.S. and Germany.
I dunno. Just give me plain sliced bread with a slice of aged cheese (preferably "farmer's" cheese, i.e., unpasteurized), and I'm happy. No work of art needed.
I don't like fresh mint tea myself, but nowadays you can indeed get it literally anywhere drinks are sold.
I just ate dessert, which consisted of the following:
Finely chopped red and green cabbage mixed with Greek yogurt, sprinkled with mixed dried fruit, a few apricot halves from a can and some chopped canned pine apple (canned fruit because I'm slack).
I wouldn't call it boring, but that has got to be bloody healthy, right?
The Netherlands actually is one of the largest /exporters/ of agricultural products in the world, second only to the US [0] & to the tune of 83% of its GDP [1].
Interesting tidbit: when asked what's for dinner, the answer in the Netherlands usually only mentions the type of vegetables, even though meat is generally also part of the meal. The stereotypical Dutch dinner (the only warm meal of the day) consists of (cooked) potatoes, vegetables, and meat. (On Sundays, the warm meal moves to a delayed lunch time; the evening meal then is bread again. Social/regional variations possible, of course. Again, this is stereotypical of when I grew up in the '70s/'80s. We also ate pasta, rice, Chinese, and other stuff, don't worry.)
I am Dutch and tall too. Way taller than my parents. However, I always suspected it has to do with things like growth hormone in meat instead of fresh food.
I agree, there probably are specific foodstuffs in our diet now (such as dairy & meat) that cause growth above other foodstuffs, but these have become more affordable across the board due to "early-access" availability in the distribution chain (with a major component of that being the port)
I am of Dutch descent, but I have never set foot in the Netherlands. Somehow, though, I am much taller (6'1) than my dad and his father, who were both pretty short (5'2).
I've heard the explanation that the tallness of the Dutch is because they consume so many dairy products. It sounds quite plausible to me, because if you look at the other countries in the top of the list, many of them are countries which consume a lot of dairy products as well. It even could explain why the Maasai are so much taller than other Africans, because they drink a lot of cow milk too.
I doubt it. I come from the South West of England (known for enormous consumption of dairy products) and people aren't tall. I'm just under 6ft and was tall there, whereas I'm short here in The Netherlands.
It's probably a combination of genetics, cycling everywhere and eating so many slices of brown bread and potatoes.
Basic statistics also plays a part: when comparing arbitrary groups you'll often see smaller groups as outliers. Both high and low. Dutch population isn't huge (16m) so that is also a contributing factor..
Is there a name for that phenomenon? I saw a similar thing in some data that we were looking at recently, and it took a while to work out that the reason why one group's number was consistently a bit smaller than another group's number was that we were simply taking the max of a smaller group. it's obvious in retrospect, but can catch you out if you're not expecting it.
I'd like to have a name for it, a reference to send people to.
The absolute growth in average height? For sure. But a lot of these changes in lifestyle happened in steplock with other European countries (sweden, norway, germany) so they don't necessarily explain why we had such massive growths relative to other European countries. Epigenetics are interesting, offspring of survivors of the winter of 1944 (what we call "de hongerwinter") had a tendency towards obesity, more so than people who were born slightly before that winter. I'm not aware of any studies on height and epigenetics. Our country has always been prone to flooding, but if anything, such "evolutionary" pressures have gotten less as we developed more technology to deal with flood-prone areas.
I'd also like to call attention to Belgian men finishing a respectable second place for men (although Belgian women don't feature in their respective top 10). I would argue this supports my Port of Rotterdam and cost-effectiveness of produce hypothesis, as Belgium would benefit similarly from its proximity to the port, even though Belgian diet is a lot less dairy-centric than the Dutch diet. There should also be measurable differences between Flanders and Wallonia, due to Wallonia being more distant in km, but less so between flemish and wallonians in Brussels, because of the "wallonian enclave" situation (even though the diets supposedly differ)
> "Tall people tend to have a longer life expectancy, with a reduced risk of heart disease. On the other hand, there is some evidence that they are at greater risk of certain cancers, such as colorectal, postmenopausal breast and ovarian cancers."
And this link does show a relationship, albeit far from being as large as the slate article seems to suggest. I'd rather trust a PLOS publication honestly.
That article is all over the place. Centenarians in Japan are 4 inches shorter than 75-year-olds? No mention of controlling for diet during upbringing, nor that a human shrinks as they age. The taller half of Europe has fewer centenarians per capita than the shorter half? No mention of climate, which is more troublesome to the elderly in northern Europe. Scandanvians have more heart disease than Iberians? No mention of dietary control. Sardinian soldiers who reach age 70 live a little longer if short? What about if they don't reach age 70? What if more short Sardinian soldiers die in their 60s?
There isn't much in the way of apples-to-apples comparison in that article.
Most advantages of being tall are based on peer perception, which is always behind the curve. The trend is that it's no longer as advantageous to be tall, just like it's no longer as advantageous to be strong, or to be able to run fast. In an information economy world, and with increasing global population, being more efficient on a per-human basis, being more intelligent, will become more important factors than the more archaic advantages like strength and traits of physical dominance.
Advantageous like "people look up to tall people" are based on perception, and perception changes. For example more people used to like slightly chubby girls, and now our perception puts attractiveness at thin girls. However things like "smaller people consume less energy" or "smaller people live longer" are fundamental and if those advantages are conducive to the future then that's where the curve guiding perception is heading.
Other examples of changing perceptions are: small feet in China, large butts in Florida. It took some time, but eventually people realized that small feet bore no real advantages and perception changed.
And as most people have no choice in their height, arguing for/against a certain height is not much more different than arguing why certain races/cultures are better/worse.
I'm 6'8 and my girlfriend is 5'2. Usually I find our arguments to be the opposite way round in that "you have it better", e.g. My girlfriend needs a stool to reach the top shelf of the cupboards, but I have to time my steps as to not hit my head on door frames.
I think the worst one was learning to drive and then the many frustrating trips trying to find a car I could fit in.
I have a fun bit of anecdata. My wife and I are not Dutch but our son was born in Amsterdam. He was over 6' (183cm) when he was 13 and is now about 6'5 at 17 years old. I never reached 6' myself, and only a few cousins/uncles have.
One thing the Dutch do is give doses of vitamins particularly D to all children for the first few years.
It's vital for the darker skinned citizens (Moroccans/Algerians) but probably pointless for the 'average' white Dutch person.
My standard joke to Dutchies is that they grow tall to compensate for the fact that much of the Netherlands is lower than sea level.
Hey there I'm Algerian. I find height to be an interesting topic in Algeria because a lot of people grew much taller after france left algeria, so i think environment and nutrition are big factors. My mom, her sister, and her brother were all born in the early 50s during the war and french rule and they were all relatively short. 5'0 5'2 and 5'7 for my uncle, while her other two siblings a sister and brother who were born after the war were much taller. My aunt was 5'6 and my uncle 6'0, and now his son is 6'5.
I think people grew taller generally after the 60s ?
Richer nutrition globally certainly, lots of meat (also leading to earlier puberty I seem to remember) ?
I'm French and I notice the exact same thing in France with the second and third generation of immigrants from North Africa. You see the older guys that first immigrated to France in the 60's hovering around 5'2 or so and the sons and grandsons are all around 6'2" / 6'3".
yep it's definitely a nutritional issue. One of the biggest issues about the french occupation was that the native was literally starving. The natives were pushed off the fertile lands, and it was given to european colonists.
Bigger body is beneficial in colder climate and milk is the key in building the bones to enable it - thus whole North Europe and Eastern Europe consume a lot of milk, and lactose intolerance is rare there while being the norm everywhere else on Earth.
Countries like India are heavy users of diary products. Lactose intolerance is rare too. But always fare very poorly in the height rankings. So it cannot be concluded that it is diary products alone.
milk(calcium) just enables for bigger stronger bones, thus it provides that advantage when there is a pressure for it. The selective pressure for bigger body is present in cold climate and not present in India and even more - due to poverty one can see a pressure for smaller body there. Milk in India is used for another reason - it is a source of cheap (compare to meat) animal protein.
Dietary vitamin D is a relatively low dose and doesn't absorb as well. If you have SAD, for example, the treatment is a humongous needle of VitD and then getting some sun.
interesting fact, actually from this site http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/dutch-sea.htm it said "Half of the country lies below 1 meter above sea level, with an eighth of the country lying below sea level."
Have just caught up with a friend who was employed to extract gas onshore in Holland. The "10s of centimetres" of subsidence they caused was not popular.
More specifically, the damage these cause in a country that has no natural earthquakes to speak of (so houses aren't build for that kind of damage), and the political denial about this issue (because natural resources equal convenient state income).
Along the same lines, while travelling in Asia I often see asian-american teenagers visiting their asian family. They are usually much bigger than their asian cousins.
Everyone benefits from additional vitamin D. Nearly everyone is deficient. I take ~3 times the 'suggested' daily dose in supplements, because the suggestion is weirdly low. It reduces the risk of cancer, among other things. You can actually safely take 10 times the suggested daily dose every day without risks, but there aren't any known benefits above ~4 times (100 mcg a day)
The field of medicine is much too large for doctor's to know everything. They are usually not very knowledgeable about dietary needs, following the very conservative general guidelines.
In 2011, The Endocrine Society issued clinical practice
guidelines for vitamin D, stating that the desirable
serum concentration of 25(OH)D is >75 nmol/L (>30 ng/ml)
to maximize the effect of this vitamin on calcium, bone,
and muscle metabolism [37]. It also reported that to
consistently raise serum levels of 25(OH)D above 75
nmol/L (30 ng/ml), at least 1,500-2,000 IU/day of
supplemental vitamin D might be required in adults, and
at least 1,000 IU/day in children and adolescents.
Vitamin D is distributed to babies and young children all over Europe (E.g. Ireland, Poland).
And it is not pointless for whites, quite the opposite, white persons have more trouble producing them from the sun than darker ones.
I always find it funny that being tall is seen as positive. There is actually a lot to say for being short. Cars and houses could be smaller, we'd need less food. Is there really anything a 4 foot person can't do as opposed to a 6 foot person? We just need a frame to carry our brains around. Of course there is some tail-end of the distribution stuff like professional basketball and sumo wrestling. And there is the fact that we didn't optimize the world for small people. But I think there is good case for smaller people.
The article is discussing taller populations, not individuals. Within populations being tall tends to be a proxy metric for general prosperity, so of course it's a positive.
Aside from that there seem to be intrinsic advantages to being tall. Taller people have bigger bodyparts, including bigger brains, and there's a correlation between larger craniums and higher intelligence[1].
This doesn't seem to be a very thoroughly studied subject though, but it really should be. If there's anything we could be doing to increase the average intelligence of human species that's going to pay dividends down the road.
"Within populations being tall tends to be a proxy metric for general prosperity"
Which is something I object to. In the past obesity and skin color were also linked to propserity. In some countries they still are. We shouldn't accept such nonsense.
You object to consistently having plentiful nutrition from infancy on the scale of nations over large time spans being strongly linked to prosperity? That's essentially what the tall = positive statement is about.
Few things are as well established as strong correlations for prosperity. You might as well say "I reject reality and substitute my own".
I do reject your concept of realitiy and I do think everybody is substituting their own.
Other than that I think being tall is great, but being small is better. Our nutrition has improved quite a lot through the years. And I hope it will continue to do so. I say let's start with cutting all growth hormones from our meat and milk and see where that brings us.
Of course the last thing to be optimized for tall people is something like airline seats where there's significant pressure to optimize costs.
Try going to The Netherlands sometime. You'll find that all sorts of everyday objects are optimized for tall people, including the height of counters, urinals, toilets etc.
Well, the cost matrix is asymmetric. A world that caters for tall people is inconvenient, at worst, for short people; a world where spaces are made for short or medium people is unbearable or unlivable for tall people. The best is to get away from one-size-fits-all, which is why multiple urinals are often installed at different heights.
Except for airline seats. Because tall people now form an opportunity to extract a premium. You can get an economy seat and suffer, or get an economy seat 'plus' that is the same exact seat located at the emergency exit (meaning leg room and freezing cold from the door).
You used to be able to just book early and select those seats, but the airlines figured out that people who are tall, want to significantly lower the risk of thrombosis in the legs, and travel with at least some measure of comfort, really want those seats. So now you pay extra with a lot of airlines (looking at you KLM).
Being able to traverse busy areas quickly is a benefit though.
"A survey of the Fortune 500 conducted in 2005 revealed that the average CEO is 6 feet tall; over 90pc of CEOs are above average height; and only 3pc of CEOs are under 5’7”."
I wonder how much the negatives of being short are caused by lower self esteem due to simply what people say and think about heights.
I'm one of the shortest people in the country with the tallest people in the world, the Netherlands. My height is 164 cm (aside: why do people tend to give their heights in imperial units? Does anyone get that?). I actually never had a problem with my height or felt bad about it when I was younger. I felt bad about plenty of other things about myself. I remember in elementary school a medical inspection where the inspector told me I'll always be short, and asked me what I thought of it, as if I'd be depressed about it. I didn't get her at all. But whenever there's discussion about it online, it's things like people saying women prefer taller men, or people who are 10 cm taller than me saying they hate being short, and people like that inspection woman that do trigger the insecurity part of my brain.
I think it's completely irrational though. As other people have posted, I think the link between health, intelligence and height is one of correlation instead of causation. And I know women's preferences are often much more diverse and different than what people tend to say and think. But still it triggers that insecurity. And I know that can really be a bad thing in itself. Maybe that's the real "shortness" problem people tend to have?
It's all relative. As the paper shows, 164cm is average male height in some countries. The average person is only a plane ride away from being either a short or tall person. Unless they are Dutch.
Women certainly don't want to date men who are shorter than they are. So it is a definite inconvenience to be shorter than the average woman in your own country.
Just sit at a cafe and note every couple you see and count how many women are taller than their male counterpart. I'd be willing to bet you that if I did in my area, I'd find 0. In fact, in all my years of living and traveling I've only seen ONE couple that had a short guy (less than five foot six) with a tall woman (six foot tall+).
Or look at dating profiles on match.com and see what women want in terms of eligible heights. You're extremely likely to find women want guys who are taller than they are. In fact, it's not uncommon for a short women to want at minimum guys who are close to a foot taller than they are.
And then look at movies and show and see how often couples have the women taller than the man. It's not often.
I'd take what online-tech-forum-dwellers say about women with a grain of salt :) After all, we're humans, we have more than an evolutionary eugenetic instict for choosing our partners, like characteristics and social status, and apart from them, different women prefer different physical traits. For health, well, there is a certain clustering of centenarians in some parts of the world, especially in Japan and Sardinia, places not known for tall people. For intelligence, that's just nonsense; even if we say that intelligence is related to cranium size, we can't certainly say that cranium size is linked to height.
>I wonder how much the negatives of being short are caused by lower self esteem due to simply what people say and think about heights.
There are statistically proven negative points in being not very attractive in general. Beautiful people have (significantly) higher chance to become successful in their job and/or businesses.
> (aside: why do people tend to give their heights in imperial units? Does anyone get that?)
I'm from the US, so I do naturally think in the ridiculous old units, but I think it might be because measurements in cm are too big to be easily grasped, whereas measurements in meters are too small. Which is more readily apparent?
A.) 188 cm
B.) 1.88 m
C.) 74"
D.) 6'2"
Additionally, the old imperial units of measurement are more or less explicitly human-scale.
My understanding is that both the tallest and the shortest men are in Africa, and this is due to that continents having the highest genetic diversity - only a small subset of the human genes left Africa.
I don't think it matters much the "small subset of human genes left Africa". More crucial is that the African landscape is quite varied and not too harsh. Almost everywhere south of the Sahara a small tribe could eke out a living. And yet, the environment wasn't too friendly to readily encourage population growth that lead to civilisation(s).
Such forces lead to genetic drift (and therefore variation) and also makes tribal formations unavoidable. The phenotype(s) of these tribes are then the embodiment of that genetic drift. When it comes to height, you end up with the Pygmy tribes in the Congo basin and the Dinka along the Nile basin.
"The pattern of genomic variation in contemporary southern African populations thus resulted from unions between the most diverse genomes found within Africa to the least differentiated as represented by populations impacted by a severe founder effect (bottleneck) associated with the out-of-Africa dispersal"
Given time, a hash enough environment is going to select for phenotypes despite the quality of the genetic variation. That has to happen or the group dies off [1]. That is the point of the phase "I don't think it matters much". I expect a refutation of that statement to be along the lines of, "here is information that shows that the difference in genetic variation between the in Africa and outside of Africa peoples is so big (or the latter have very low variation) that there are marked differences in adaptability to different environments".
[1] The reason for extinction may well be very low genetic variation.
> And yet, the environment wasn't too friendly to readily encourage population growth that lead to civilisation(s).
Hm... maybe the environment was too friendly to encourage a civilisation? I mean, if food grows around you all year long, you're much less inclined to develop means of storing it than if you know you'll experience harsh winter in a few months... Same with housing, clothing, heating, etc.
I think you are not considering that before the domestication of plants, even if "food was growing around you all year long", it had low caloric content. The key measure is the cost of getting them calories. There are rough thresholds that almost guarantee that you may forever survive but never thrive.
IIRC Australian aborigines, Europeans, and native Americans share most of their DNA, this is across many different landscapes and chances for isolation.
Also, civilizations are quite recent compared to the length of the genetic drift.
In my anecdotal experience (which I nevertheless tend to value more than "obvious" trivia everybody carries around),
Tall women don't prefer taller men.
Well, maybe they do in principle, but it doesn't seem to affect their choice at the end of day. Most of really tall women usually go with average height men.
I wonder what the results would look like aggregated by ethnic group rather than nationality. Some African groups (such as the Maasai and Dinka) are known for having really tall people, but they don't have countries of their own, so they disappear when averaged with their shorter countrymen.
dutch parents stuff milk down the throats of their children. the kids dont like it as the stuff often tastes bad but they keep doing it anyway. 'melk is goed voor elk' (milk is good for everyone) and 'joris driepinter' (joris drinkes three glasses a day) are common folklore here. You get milk with your breakfast and again at school. we don't have school provided lunch in primary school, but we did have school provided milk. I suppose it is good for one thing though: I'm like 6'2 ish and sometimes i actually feel a bit short.
I think practically everywhere in Europe did that in the '80s and '90s. We'd get milk and yoghurt in primary school in Ireland back then. Don't know if the practice continued past '95, though.
But it is quite popular in almost every other European country and the conditions here look perfect to me: tall people, good installations, a weather that usually favors indoor sports, a very active population willing to practice any sport... I see people following the NBA, I see sport shops where basketball equipment is no less present than in any other country, I see baskets in schools and high schools like everywhere. And I have even seen quite some people playing. Certainly more than playing volleyball, and the Dutch volleyball team is a very good one.
Of course football is the big thing here, but other countries like Spain or Italy where football is huge also have top basketball teams.
Thank you for the number of players data, but I still wonder what are the reasons that basketball is not bigger in the NL.
I'm curious why Eastern European countries make up a majority of this top 10 list both for men and women. Is there something uniquely different about their diets?
