Massive dataset: “2181 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in 65 million participants in 200 countries and territories.”
(A) Mean height of 19-year-olds in 2019. (B) Change in mean height of 19-year-olds from 1985 to 2019.
Most countries have continued growing taller, especially in the Third World where the potentialities of Flynn!height gains are not yet close to being realized.
(A) Mean BMI of 19-year-olds in 2019. (B) Change in mean BMI of 19-year-olds from 1985 to 2019. BMI=body-mass index.
And almost everyone has grown fatter. The causality is a matter of the dispute, but the fact that it’s so universal suggests that it is a global phenomenon with universal causes, not culture-specific.
Each arrow shows one country. For each country, the arrow begins at mean height and BMI values in 1985 and ends in mean height and BMI values in 2019. Each arrow colour refers to countries in one region. BMI=body-mass index. *Countries in northwestern Europe, southwestern Europe, and English-speaking high-income countries (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, the UK and the USA).
Mean height and BMI of 19-year-olds in 2019 (ie, those born in 2000) at each age from 5 to 19 years compared with the median of the WHO growth reference (A) and the world median (B). Each cell represents the difference between the height or BMI of children and adolescents in one country and the median value for a given age of the WHO growth reference (A) and all countries (B). Countries are ordered by decreasing height or increasing BMI in adolescents at age 19 years in 2019.
Height observations
As expected: North Europeans and Balkanoids at the top, Meds and East Asians in the middle, most of the Third World at the bottom.
SINOTRIUMPH: Chinese teens are now taller than South Koreans, making them the tallest people in East Asia. This is amazing, considering that South Chinese have much less steppe admixture than Koreans and North Chinese. DONGBEI POWER!
I notice that the gap between South Korea and Best Korea is now rather modest, with the latter now decidedly taller than the Japanese and Taiwanese, and about as tall as Hong Kongers. This corroborates reports (e.g. Andrey Lankov) that Kim Jong Un has improved living standards for his people.
East Europeans now join Nords and Balkanoids as the world’s tallest people. Amongst boys: Czechia #7, Slovakia #9, Poland #15. Surprise Ukrotriumph, with Ukraine at #11, unexpected in light of its relative poverty and lower per capita meat consumption. But Russia – and Hungary – do significantly worse, they are now the manlets of Eastern Europe with heights comparable to that of Le 56% Face burgers.
Speaking of which, it is amusing that Guatemalan girls are the world’s shortest. Daily reminder that stereotypes don’t lie, even when they’re cruel (“squatemalans”).
Weight observations
Also as expected: Various island peoples at the top, followed soon after by Arabs and the US; impoverished Third World at the bottom; Romania and France do well within Europe.
China is also now one of the fattest East Asian nations, well ahead of Japan, Taiwan, and South Koreans (girls).
Feel free to point out more amusing observations, and/or check out a related post: The (Physical) Strength of Nations
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How much would the West change, if you merely put everyone on a 1900 diet/exercise regime?
I also wonder how height and mass gains have changed historical sex differences in mass and height.
I remember watching a clip of the Soviet-American meeting on the Elbe in 1945. I noticed that the Americans, at the time one of the world’s tallest people, were significantly taller than the Soviets.
Among the Soviets, I noticed that the Slavs were the tallest, followed by Caucasians, and then the Central Asians, who looked tiny.
The Slavic and American heights are more equal now, with the Americans simply becoming obese. One Arab guy I knew in high high school told me that about 45-60 years ago, Arabs were in the habit of calling any tall guy in their countries “American sized.” This mostly came from watching men in Hollywood like John Wayne(6’4), Gregory Peck(6’3), or Clint Walker(6’6).
I’ve noticed what seems to be a trend for younger women in the 18-early 20s age group to suddenly seem more imposing and large in stature than they used to be, definitely more so than when I and my peers were at that age. There doesn’t seem to have been comparable noticeable growth in the stature of men. When I am around one of these taller and more solidly built young ladies and they are on the chubby side I feel small, and I’m not.
I was wondering if it is evidence of some kind of Lamarckian effect, feminism in the UK is causing female testosterone to increase and making women grow in size as they become more Amazonian to fulfill their Amazonian social roles.
Romanian 19 year old girls are very underweight, the boys seem normal on the other hand.
I can see China’s government being disturbed by growing obesity. It’d be a good issue to add to a five year plan as there are plenty of steps they could take to avoid becoming America: Ban fast food, reduce sugar addiction, reduce carb addiction, teach people to cook properly, encourage bicycles in cities the way they do in parts of Europe etc.
Perhaps they’re already doing something as I recall recently reading about China banning some kind of online watch-me-eat-till-I-faint gluttony fad.
Who are “Le 56% burgers”? South Americans?
When it comes to males, Russians are late bloomers it seems really growing at ages 16-17, while Hungarian are very tall compared to the other nationalities up until they are 17-18 at which their earlier height advantage lessens. Ukrainian 10-year-old boys are apparently the same height as 16-year-old Russian boys.
https://i.ibb.co/g4gL1PH/height.png
https://i.ibb.co/xg742D5/legend.png
United Statesians
Obesity is the scourge. Most of these xyz-burgers should be abolished.
But..but…what about all those workers?
Let them starve to death. A poetic justice.
Doesn’t fat produce estrogen?
That’s what I was thinking of – a fatter society is more feminine. Not aesthetically, but psychologically.
Perhaps, conservatives should support fat taxes.
The most obese parts of American society, the lower classes who live in the country, are the fattest. The urban liberals – fags, the lot of them – that are the thinnest.
Japan is thin, and much more feminine than America.
What I meant to say is, the most obese parts are the most masculine.
It’s Christmas eve, and I’m drinking a bit, sorry.
Probably true, but I’m not thinking of it as sole political determinant. Fitter rurals might become more right-minded. Same with urbanites.
Of course, I think BMI is a somewhat primitive measure. I’m not sure vegans who are thin duplicate the physiology of meat-eaters who were thin in the year 1900.
With some gays it is impossible to tell if they have AIDS. I wonder if they might be inadvertently influenced by being in circles with people with HIV.
Three countries where the girls have not become fatter: Russia, Kazakhstan… Zimbabwe.
(well, three countries of a visible size, there are probably some smaller ones as well.)
So out of major countries, Iraqi ladies are the fattest? You’d think between the drone strikes and death squads, they would get some exercise. Syrian ladies do.
Who had the best “fat genes” in the world?
Samoans, desert Arabs, or those different peoples who have women with steatopygia, so notable that their children can stand on their buttocks? I’m thinking it must be the final category, but I am unsure about a contest between the first two.
Seems like it would be easy to rank scientifically, if it wasn’t so un-PC.
I’ve also wondered what effect the trend of the average women’s looks might have on masculinity. At one time, the average age of women was quite young, and they weighed less. Perhaps, this would effect the testosterone levels in men.
Regarding height: aren’t the countries with the smallest sex differences, the most pozzed? Or at least that would be my theory, based on sexual dimorphism.
Much better. Something which Hungry Brain noted was that people actually ate a huge quantity of calories in 1909(more than in 1960s, in fact, though less than what we eat now) but their daily life involved so much physical activity that obesity was perhaps 2% at max(probably 1.5% tbh).
Everyone should support “fat taxes.”
The current environment is one where the human mind is ill designed for; the book Hungry Brain(which I highly recommend) goes into this into detail. It goes into detail on the mechanics, but in short, the brain has a number of mechanisms to provide motivation to keep us from losing weight(and physiological adaptations to maintain weight), but almost nothing to keep us from gaining weight because its such an unnatural position for an organism to be in.
Anatoly, you may or may not be surprised to learn that the Manchu population has recovered to 1890 levels in China as of late. They were among the first ethnicities along with the Inner Mongols to get restrictions on 1-child policy lifted due to their “model minority status”. They tend to mog the Han physically.
My wife is 176cm and towers over most of her Han colleagues. She is the shortest of her relatives. My FiL is about 179/180 cm, and was born in a famine year. One would wonder how tall he would’ve gotten if there wasn’t 2 straight years of drought/war in China those years and he had gotten proper nutrition in Utero and in early life.
I’m 183cm and his remark to me was “Americans aren’t as tall as I thought.” I suppose he was trying to neg his daughter’s boyfriend a bit, but yes even the East Asians are catching up.
I’ve read that quite a bit has to do with dairy consumption. If you adjusted for the bow-leggedness of many Mongols and Tartars, I’m sure you would get similar measurements of their skeletons as well.
The further South in China you go, the less milk they drink.
Albanians and Bulgarians seem to be manlets of the Balkans – lack of I2 and R1alpha really showing there.
As I understand it (rather nebulously, my wife explains quite a bit of context and specific ideological language I’m not familiar with), the Party Congress considered putting a law on the books that stated future party members would need to maintain a certain BMI/get a “good health” certificate in order to combat an image problem of the young party members weaned on the “silver rice bowl” looking like the Capitalist fat cats on the propaganda posters. The measure was tabled, but with the caveat that it would be on the docket for the next one. It gives the affected parties some time to work out.
It’s worth mentioning that most of the obesity in China happens among men. Women in China are noxious and brutal to each other in an almost comical extreme here. Gaining the equivalent of 10lbs here would earn the woman total hostility from her colleagues, especially if she’s single.
We had an end-of-semester faculty meeting last year where all of the female academics in my department forced one of the women to make a formal apology to the rest of the staff for not losing her post-pregnancy weight. That professional humiliation was considered a politeness because they had apparently opted to not shun her from the communal office for the adjuncts. No such critique leveled at her obese husband in another department, I’m told.
China does need to do something about the ever-rising obesity, which isn’t helped much by a traditional culture that centers just about everything around food. I suppose the start is always by bullying Party members.
It’s quite interesting that, in the US, Hispanics are known for both their obesity (including heightened diabetes risk) AND their longevity! Seems contradictory, no?
No surprise regarding Hungarians. I always found them pretty short and stocky. Romania is very similar but with more tall people. The shorties are skinnier than Hungarians though.
I guess we’re entering the age of Asian bbw proliferation, too.
It will be interesting to see the results of such inquiries when active phase of current pandemic will be over – fatty numbers almost everywhere should be reduced notably in theory. Guess we will not get it earlier than 2024-25 at best.
https://twitter.com/qin_duke/status/1342299090533625857
Based. That’s what a functioning female culture looks like. Shaming is a big part of how women keep women on the straight and narrow.
Going back at least several decades, Montenegrins have had a reputation for being tall.
I also support a tax on poz, somewhat for the same reasons. Some don’t seem to have natural defenses against it – probably because the environment in which we live is too novel.
The tall stock from the Balkans seems to come from the Dinaric mountains in Herzegovina and Northern Montenegro
Tall Serbs usually have ancestors who came from Bosnia&Herzegovina in the the 18th Century to settle and help in the reestablishing of Serbia as a state
I’m skeptical.
The tallest Northern Euros aren’t the Brits and the Irish, but they are completely lacking in strongly divergent admixture. With the exception of some Pacific Islanders, island people universally seem to be a bit shorter.
As far as the Southern Chinese go, if they are shorter, then it might have something to do with wet rice agriculture, or multiple harvests in a year.
In the former Yugo countries ‘the Dinaric type’ was a phrase used for tall people from the more mountainous regions. As Montenegro is almost entirely covered in mountains, they are usually figured as a typical example. Though in my experience, the muslims there seem to be shorter than the Christians for whatever reason. Maybe more intrbreeding with surrounding muslom populations.
The muslims there are usually descended from converts who were from more urban and from generally shorter populations east of Montenegro
Fitter urbanites are definitely not more right minded. Maybe the guys who pump iron – that wouldn’t surprise me.
But across the population, being fitter and slimmer tracks with being more left wing and I guess feminine.
This is a global phenomenon. Feminine Europe is slimmer and fitter than masculine America, feminine Asia is slimmer than masculine America.
Interestingly, China which modeled itself on America, and adopted a masculine, aggressive, barbaric style, is now becoming obese, whereas Taiwan and Singapore are still thin.
I’m not sure. Japan isn’t pozzed, yet there seems to be less sexual dimorphism than the West.
Expats used to complain they would go to sleep with a girl (make up, clothes, hair do), and wake up with a 12 year old boy (without makeup and clothes, a thin body with few curves and flat chest). Thats a real phenomenon across Asia.
Still, I think you’re onto something culturally. The more women despise feminine qualities and try and ape men – taking their cues from a culture which despises the feminine – the more pozzed it will be.
But we see that men were more feminine – or better embraced their feminine side while rensining masculine- in former ages, and the fetishization of brute masculinity is a modern phenomena (and a driver of feminism among women)
You can’t shame people for being fat, but you can shame them for being short. Short people are the most discriminated against in all of human history.
A related question is what height (and weight) is ideal. In modern times, this should be determined by what is best for competitive athletic performance; dance performance, military performance and sexual attraction are also factors, but my findings don’t contradict these additional goals. We can use the average height and weight of Olympic athletes as a proxy. The data come from Topend Sports’ Anthropometry webpages.
At the most recent Winter Olympics 307 medals (including 103 gold) were awarded, while at the most recent Summer Olympics 973 medals (including 307 gold) were awarded, hence a ~1:3 Winter:Summer athlete ratio for countries capable of competing in both. At the 2012 Summer Olympics the United States sent 530 athletes and Russia sent 436 athletes, while at the 2010 Winter Olympics they sent 216 and 177 respectively, for a ratio of 1:2.45 and 1:2.46 respectively. (The United States’ 2018:2016 ratio is 1:2.30, suggesting a narrowing gap with the strong secular increase in the number of Winter medals awarded). I will use a 1:2.45 ratio.
Hence, using a 1.225:1.000:1.225 weighted average:
– The ideal average male height is 181.85 cm (5′ 11⅝″).
– The ideal average male weight is 80.45 kg (177.36 lbs).
– The ideal average male BMI is 24.3.
– The ideal average female height is 169.20 cm (5′ 6⅝″).
– The ideal average female weight is 62.55 kg (137.90 lbs).
– The ideal average female BMI is 21.8.
Using the NCD-RisC data, the Danes have the most ideal average heights (however Olympic athletes are on average between 25 and 27 years old, not 19 years old), and the Japanese have the most ideal BMIs (the Swiss and Danes are the best in Europe). The overall “Olympian body” gold medal thus goes to the Danes, since BMIs are lower in athletes thanks to strenuous exercise and proper nutrition. Unfortunately I don’t have data on standard deviations, but looking at Wikipedia the SDs in the taller nations appear to be around 7 cm in men and 6-6.5 cm in women. I suspect that a slightly higher standard deviation (perhaps around 8-9 cm in men and 7-7.5 cm in women) is ideal, since you can thus have enough 150 cm gymnasts and 185 cm tennis players at the tails, but also plenty of people in the middle for the vast majority of sports, which require moderate statures. I have also not excluded team sports, which probably distort the results in favor of a slightly taller ideal height (basketball players, water polo players, etc.), although I think the above result is still broadly valid.
Future research should look into the average heights, weights, body measurements and/or personality characteristics of Olympic and X Games medalists.
Note to Anatoly: I would greatly appreciate it if you could refrain in advance from republishing my comments as separate posts or reposting them anywhere outside this comments section. Thanks, Arctic Wolf.
Agree with the Duke. I don’t believe for a second Chinese youth are taller than SKs.
Take any Chinese gov statistic, look into it carefully, and it is garbage. That’s why you see investment banks excited to get electricity production data from China. The official gov economic data is such worthless trash, electricity use as a proxy for economic growth is more useful to them.
The usual nonsense from you:
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3728344
Also, Taiwan not trying to emulate the US, lol. Yeah right.
Singapore also has impressive growth, around 30% overweight and 10% obesity though as presumably expected of a more paternalistic society, it appears a bit more controlled.
Japan, with its incredible obsession on weight(and control, including posing the risk of losing medical care from obese individuals) has the lowest levels worldwide around 3% obesity. This may actually be backfiring in some ways, adversely affecting the health of expecting mothers, but its a clear evidence of social policy working.
Short of significant social policy working against it, obesity can be expected to flatly increase across society as food producers have basically found a way to hack the human gestalt for increased consumption. We see this in AK’s numbers as well.
The numbers seem debatable here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_paradox
Japan is a nation of gourmands. The availability of delicious food of all varieties at all times of day and night is much greater than anywhere in America. Its foodie heaven. If the food environment is hacking our brains, it should be doing so much worse in Japan.
Japan actually got slimmer since the war. The whole food manufacturers have hacked our brains thing is nonsense.
It is a question of culture – values and aesthetics. Japan values the small, the subtle, the elegant, while America values the large, the brash, the aggressive. Slender men with little musculature in designer clothes are considered hot in Japan, in America the brawny jock wearing jeans.
Traditional food is often contrasted to fast food – a traditional French dish is steak fries, which you can get in bistros serving traditional fare across France. How is that different from a hamburger?
Traditional food is fatty, creamy, carby, and utterly delicious, and societies in periods of prosperity had wide access to amazing dishes, yet did not grow obese. Creamy, salty, French cheeses, thick cut bacon, salt pork, fresh bread, butter – yet people even in cities didn’t grow fat.
What matters is culture.
There is something else about modernity – the idea that “growth” is the most important thing. I would submit this leads to a peculiar restlessness abd dissatisfaction that gnaws at our entrails, and leads to excess in all areas of life and the prizing of the “large”.
Buddhist ethics would lead to a different outcome, with its appreciation for the small and a life that is content with what is.
It is no surprise that China is growing obese, having imbibed the culture of growth and size – but it is a modern phenomenon more generally.
Social policy like taxing fatness will leave little effect – families that spend a majority of their income on food, are fat. The taxes would have to be extremely punishing to be effective, and people would revolt. This is a culture problem, not a brute force problem.
I’m all for American elites to lead the charge towards a more Buddhist ethics – that could work. However, the lower classes may not listen. The current technology stagnation, and the drying up of genius through bureaucracy, may lead to a shift away from the religion of growth, expansion, and size, which will alter people’s aesthetics and sensibilities.
The Hellenic results are consistent with previous studies. Our boys and girls have become one of the tallest people in the world, surpassing Australians, Americans, the British, Italians and French and very close to Germans. The old cliche was that Greeks were short and stocky people. Unfortunately, our BMI for boys is also consistent with most other studies. The move away from the Mediterranean diet has devastated our men. Fortunately, our girls still score well on BMI but I have witnessed a decline in the aesthetic qualities of the Greek woman over the last 20 years. Gradually, the culture of ‘it’s my body and I can do what I want with it, has become deeply entrenched’ with devastating consequences for Greek men that regularly attend the beach like me and like to admire our women.
https://twitter.com/Podzhog_Sarayev/status/1342536105850114048
I wonder if there is an correlation between getting fatter (but not taller) and economic stagnation.
I’d be interested to see if the countries with a lower slope (more height gain relative to weight gain) are considered attractive investment prospects.
Then again, height gain could be looking in the rear view mirror. In Germany, I would imagine that kids born in 1950 ended up being taller at 20 than kids born in 1940; but 20 years after 1950 is 1970, and the 1970s had less economic growth than the 1960s.
Not really. Food isn’t cheap in Japan.
Asians in the U.S. also live longer than their counterparts overseas. I don’t think the Salmon Bias is correct. An implication of the Salmon Bias is also that selective immigration should lower the life expectancy of Latin American countries relative to the U.S. Considering the large difference in infant mortality, poverty, and infectious disease burden relative to the U.S., I find the life expectancy in much of Latin America to be relatively high. Costa Rica, a relatively wealthy Latin American country, has higher life expectancy than the U.S.
I expect Hispanics, or at least certain Hispanics simply have lower risk of certain chronic diseases, probably for genetic reasons. This is also almost surely the main reason blacks live less long than whites in the U.S.
Reading comprehension fail on your part. Glad you admitted that your total loss of facts in Taiwan and Singapore, which in being wrong on, might suggest that you’re wrong on everything else too. Let’s find out.
Social policy is a much better explanation for a clear result, when even harmful obsession with an ideal weight is being demonstrated. The threat of losing health insurance is not a mild one.
http://morningsignout.com/japanese-mothers-dont-gain-enough-weight-during-pregnancy/
And as indicated by others, a lot of this is driven by social pressure which isn’t even that subtle(Japanese bullying is infamous):
Government policy basically gives sanctions to such bullying, which obviously has a lot of negative effects but at least on the weight, positive.
Also unmentioned, but should be obvious, Japanese food is expensive, due to a number of protectionist policies they run. When apples can cost 21 dollars, even the best capitalist advertiser isn’t going to sell tons of them. No rioting in the streets, either.
Well thats what I said, social pressure. Its culture.
Its embarrassing and shameful to be fat there. Japanese internalize a value system that prizes the slender, and its part of a much larger culture that values different things than America.
But how do you engineer a culture? How do you implant values? First, you cant target a single behavior, because value systems cohere together across domains. Its not an accident that Japanese are thin and have an aesthetic that appreciates the small, the subtle, etc.
Anyways, its not a brute force problem.
Some items are surprisingly expensive, but food is cheap enough – and there are cheap enough options – that one can become obese on a low income if one wishes to.
Social pressure is often socially engineered through policy.
Because you say so? Not evidenced by single focus tobacco suppression.
Because you say so? Not evidenced by brute force solutions widespread in governance, including Japanese agricultural collusion with the ruling party, or le classic tariff. Anyway, Hungry Brain discusses the relative ease to control the environmental factors so the “brute force” arguably doesn’t have to be that disruptive.
You should try adopting a growth mindset and not be so stymied by narrow beliefs. Your assumptions there are both limiting and incorrect.
Well, Americans have been trying for decades now to lose weight, and they’ve been failing. They’ve been treating it as an individual problem unrelated to culture or values, and primarily physiological (addiction theory- itself highly problematic).
It hasn’t worked. I think obesity is a second or third order effect from a cultural pattern. Its one node of a cultural system that can’t be altered on its own without large changes in the culture. It needs a “systems” change.
As someone who recognizes that individualism is an illusion, and humans exists in ‘systems”, I’m surprised you aren’t friendlier to the idea that habits and behaviors also aren’t individual, but exist in interconnected systems.
I’m not sure what you mean. Japan is awash in cheap agricultural products.
Society as a whole could, of course, make delicious food widely unobtainable. It would be hard, but doable. But since Japan has a food environment that should be making them more obese than Americans, if the physiological addiction theory is correct, the theory seems wrong. Not to mention France, etc. The evidence against the food environment theory is too great.
Secondly, a culture has to be treated as a balance of pleasures and pains, enjoyments and restrictions. A total system where all irs elements play a part and fit together. Food is one of the great pleasures and consolations of life – take that away from Americans without giving them a corresponding pleasure, would this cause an unbalanced system that leads to mass psychological collapse?
Japan has pleasures America doesn’t have. Widespread availability of paid sex without stigma with attractive women for all sectors of male society (and the same for women). A culture that delights in fine clothing, a culture of connoisseurship, a culture of drinking and letting loose without stigma on a nearly nightly basis, a culture of politeness that takes the hard, aggressive edge out of life.
Japan obviously has its miseries as well, but it is a total system of its own, like America is.
As someone who sees through individualism, id expect you to understand network effects and systems effects.
I’m not ideologically opposed to targeting obesity with laws – I just don’t thing it will work. I think its a systems problem. But if you want to try it, try it.
If I had to speculate that is probably due to malnourishment and poor prenatal planning in Ukraine.
Mexicans also eat a lot of beans, far more than other populations in America. I read somewhere that may be one of the reasons for Mexicans longevity.
So India which has an IQ of 82 and near the bottom of grip strength measures is also one of the shortest nations?
Usually when you are bad at one thing, there are a couple good things you have to make up for it.
India as a whole looks to be the dumbest, weakest, and shortest people on Earth.
Wonder about the stat noting a great % in socioeconomically challenged areas with healthy food and health/wellness options being comparatively limited to a good number of other groups?
Somewhat related, recall a recent article on the vast health benefit differences between a Mediterranean diet with top of the line food versus one being cheaper and less healthy.
Food makes a big difference. Asians (notably Japanese and Koreans) have known to become generally taller on account of having (especially since the end of WW II) developed a more Western oriented diet.
No secret that athletic performance is considerably influenced by what one eats.
That makes Ukrainian boys so much taller than Russian ones?
My 88 year old roommate (who’s currently vacationing in Colorado) has an interesting theory about why so many Ukrainian lads are quite tall. He’s convinced that the taller boys are a direct result of the intermarriages and sexual couplings of young German soldiers and Ukrainian women, who never actually returned home but stayed and made new lives for themselves in Ukraine. A lot of the German soldiers were actually SS, and therefore were recruited with taller height requirements than the regular soldiers. I queried him more about his theory and he had developed an estimate about how many Germans may have stayed behind, and although I don’t remember how many he claimed did so, he had done his calculations based on numbers of German soldiers that were employed in Ukrainian operations, how many were killed, and how many actually did make it back home. He also thought that post war public works programs in Ukraine were greatly enhanced by this additional workforce and were built in remarkable time. Truth or fiction? I’ve never actually researched this issue, but it is an interesting possibility.
I actually knew such a Ukrainian whose wartime parents were a mixed marriage, German and Ukrainian. He was about 6”2″ and had an incredible build, as he was serious bodybuilder at one time. A really strong dude, who would fly off to Las Vegas and Hollywood and socialize with a lot of internationall jetsetters.
Han Chinese cover quite a range in physical appearance. People from Shandong Province have a reputation for being taller than other Chinese and north Chinese are often taller than south Chinese. Some sections of the Han Chinese population may well be taller than South Koreans.
Shouldn’t height be measured at an age later than 19, like 22? I grew more while in college, as do many, many men in that age group.
Young women in and around LA, where we live, are shockingly obese, especially the Mexicans and Guatemalans but plenty of white European-American and Asian girls too.
Between the rampant obesity, the widespread habit of “cursing like men/sailors”, the ubiquitous savage art (tattoos), and the general lack of serious commitment to having children (to say the least), young women in the USA (I didn’t say “Americans”) don’t seem like a real appealing group for our son(s) to find a wife. Then again, it only takes one.
They’d be wise to act now before their people become like ours in this regard.
We should be lowering taxes on productive, useful things that do not tend to harm other people or impose excessive medical costs on the taxpayer (or other policyholders paying premiums on private medical insurance).
This means we should get more of the needed revenue by levying an excise tax on fast food, soda, and other nutritionally damaging junk and sweets. People consuming these things to excess, which seems to be most US residents, tend to inflict massive unnecessary medical costs on the rest of us. (And, to mention something that a serious, proud country like China takes into account but our rulers won’t, a systematically obese, weak, unhealthy youth impairs the national defense in a real war or crisis.)
Lower taxes on work (income tax) and saving (greatly increase the amount of interest that one may earn exempt from fed income tax, from the useless $10 it is now to $5,000, indexed for inflation).
One aspect of the Japanese BMI I have not seen addressed before is the urban nature of much of life. Between Tokyo and Osaka, significant portions of the population live in metropolitan areas where large houses, cars, and boats are unnecessary for signalling status, while clothes and physical appearance are major signalling mechanisms. If you went into smaller towns and more rural areas, I think you would actually find higher BMIs. I haven’t seen data on this, but that’s my impression. It’s definitely the case that young people worry about being able to fit into the fashions they want to wear. I have never heard them declare concern about meeting government guidelines.
Chinese stand out in Japan. If you’re in a luxury department store, the Chinese are the jowly ones wearing loose-fitting clothing (at least for men).
That the Netherlands “won” both the Boys and Girls Tallness Olympics is pretty impressive considering the country is flooded with considerably shorter Arabs, Turks, Indonesians, Surinamese, etc.
Not coincidentally the Netherlands is pretty much the heartland of the North Sea lactose tolerance zone, along with eastern England, northern Germany, and southern Scandinavia. I would guess that the natives of these regions are still the world’s tallest, but whose national averages are dragged down by millions of (relatively) shrimpy Third Worlders.
As an explanation for why Ukrainians are shorter earlier on in childhood, but catch up later on to be taller.
I would assume it is due to poor pre natal care and malnutrition but this is just speculation.
I agree; but when some politicians in California tried to tax sugary soda and sweets, big soda spent a huge amount of money on ads claiming that such taxes would bankrupt hard-working single mothers.
Perhaps Ukrainians have more access to fresh vegetables than Russians do. The Russian government should support the production of vegetables, and research about what vegetables grow best in Russia, and what regions within Russia are the best for each vegetable.
Perhaps Pythagoras was wrong.
http://kiwihellenist.blogspot.com/2016/11/pythagoras-and-beans-1-hands-off-beans.html?m=1
Are you Romanian? I only other Romanian I’ve seen comment here is that Dacian Soros guy.
Reminds me of Haitians and Dominicans pulling the strings of the world’s media.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vMKfm6R-AvE
Is anyone aware of any studies of gene flow between the Shandong and Korean peninsulas? There was historically a large Shandong Han merchant community in Korea, and many of those traders took Korean concubines. Am curious whether the Korean reputation for height amongst East Asians was partially influenced by Shandong Han admixture or vice-versa. On the topic, Confucius was supposedly extremely tall as well.
Yeah too much frying in China – and now sadly the proliferation of fast food. The government now has announced they are going to regulate portion sizes in restaurants and start to penalize food waste in the food industry – thereby forcing portion control. I saw coverage in the western media that claimed it was because of food shortage – LOLOL. How crazy! But they don’t need to push bicycles… It’s normal… But now China is the largest car market – so yes that has something to do with it… I think too much smoking has something to do with it too
Indeed – much of it is about physical activity… “Carbs” weren’t an issue until people stopped doing a lot of physical work. But – meat intake was lower prior to refrigeration and industrial farms. So the calories were also “different”
Thanks for sharing that… I don’t know as much of what goes on in the North East – but I recall a few years back seeing on Chinese television there was a drive to keep the Manchu language alive. The biggest issue were the young were still moving into the major cities and so had less “use” for it. I know there was some cultural exchange going on with those across the border in Russia (that was a private documentary). What’s the status now?
By what brilliant analysis do you get the conclusion that Chinese youth can’t be taller than South Korean?
In any event – this study was done by the Lancet. Do you have a clue what they do? You think you are smarter than they are? I bet you believe that the Chinese are “fatter” though since to you that is negative. Some of you China haters are real comedians.
Also – electricity use isn’t a perfect measure either since the economy is shifting to less energy intensive industries.
The latest national data for Russia is from 2005. After that there is only one small regional data set from 2007 and one only covering small children from 2015. How can this data be used to get height data for 19 year olds in Russia in 2019? Furthermore, since Russia had a considerable decline in meat consumption throughout the 90s the early 2000s that could have an effect on the 2005 data.
Several other countries also have lacking data but the Russian data seems to be particularly old.
During the Sino-Japanese war the Chinese sometimes referred to Japanese as “dwarf bandits”, which suggests the latter were shorter. Whether Koreans were/are taller than Japanese, I don’t know.
In the 1990s meat consumption was lower than in Soviet times. There was also some scandal about chicken (imported?) being put on sale that had been in deep-freeze for over five years.
No, I am not Romanian but rather English. I know Romania is poor by Western standards but that BMI statistic for Romanian girls just struck me as odd.