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Originally Posted by JJRousseau
I'm not sure that diet has much to do with height increase (except maybe the growth hormones in milk...). I believe that the average male has been getting taller for a millennia. I think it may have more to do with health/sanitation/medicine (which up to the last few decades has been improving). Obviously the new diet is largely to blame for obesity and it will be interesting to see if average height levels off or even drops.
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Diet has a direct link to height. As does general "healthiness".
Feel free to read the lengthy, but rather dry, paper
A History of the Standard of Living in the United States by Richard H. Steckel of Ohio State University at
http://www.eh.net/encyclopedia/?arti...dard.living.us
Allow me to quote some relevant passages.
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Two measures of health are widely used in economic history: life expectancy at birth (or average length of life) and average height, which measures nutritional conditions during the growing years.
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n the past quarter century, historians have increasingly used average heights to assess health aspects of the standard of living. Average height is a good proxy for the nutritional status of a population because height at a particular age reflects an individual’s history of net nutrition, or diet minus claims on the diet made by work (or physical activity) and disease. The growth of poorly nourished children may cease, and repeated bouts of biological stress -- whether from food deprivation, hard work, or disease -- often leads to stunting or a reduction in adult height.
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the average height of native born American citizens has risen from 171.5cm in 1710 to 177cm in 1990 (Source: Stekel 2002 - cited at the above website).
There's plenty of research out there that shows the link between diet and height. There's also at least one book (The Escape from Hunger and Premature Death, 1700–2100. Europe, America, and the Third World) that addresses this issue.
Mr Mephisto