North Americans in same boat as North Koreans, height-wise
Did anyone watch the debate on Friday night? No, not the one where your parents spat expletives at each other after drinking copious amounts of alcohol - the one between John McCain and Barack Obama.
During the debate, McCain brought up the height-gap between presumptively healthy South Koreans and impoverished North Koreans…and while I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one, I was interested to read this article from the New York Times about a similar difference between Americans (presumably slobs who feed their kids Happy Meals three times a day) and Europeans (who probably eat nothing but caviar and Weetabix).
While the conditions for North Koreans are troubling, Americans have a similar height gap to worry about, and it also appears to be due to a lower standard of living, poor health care and inadequate nutrition. Last summer, the journal Social Science Quarterly reported that Americans are, quite literally, falling short of Europeans. In 1880, Americans were the tallest people in the world. But by 2000, American men, at an average height of 5-feet-10.5-inches, ranked 9th, and women, at about 5-feet-5-inches, fell to 15th. Several Northern European countries rank the highest in height, with the Dutch coming in first, at just over 6 feet for the men and 5-feet-7-inches for the women.
The height gap between Americans and Northern Europeans can’t be explained by an influx of short immigrants. Experts say the United States takes in too few immigrants to account for the disparity, and the height statistics cited in the article include only English-speaking native-born Americans, and don’t include people of Asian and Hispanic descent.
‘Too few immigrants?’ Good thing they brought that up, because I was sure McCain would have blamed our shrinking height-advantage on lax immigration laws passed by dirty liberals.
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