A Shorter America

by Natasha Chart

categories: Distribution, Eats, Health, Hunger

Published May 20, 2009 @ 07:04AM PT

It's a 2004 article, but this New Yorker piece on the height gap between Americans and Europeans seemed particularly relevant to a time when food banks all around the country are seeing increased turnout and conservatives have been seen complaining about the food being 'wasted' on the poor:

... While heights in Europe continued to climb, Komlos said, “the U.S. just went flat.” In the First World War, the average American soldier was still two inches taller than the average German. But sometime around 1955 the situation began to reverse. The Germans and other Europeans went on to grow an extra two centimetres a decade, and some Asian populations several times more, yet Americans haven’t grown taller in 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 average American man is only five feet nine and a half—less than an inch taller than the average soldier during the Revolutionary War. Women, meanwhile, seem to be getting smaller. According to the National Center for Health Statistics—which conducts periodic surveys of as many as thirty-five thousand Americans—women born in the late nineteen-fifties and early nineteen-sixties average just under five feet five. Those born a decade later are a third of an inch shorter.

Just in case I still thought this a trivial trend, Komlos put a final bar graph in front of me. It was entitled “Life Expectancy 2000.” Compared with people in thirty-six other industrialized countries, it showed, Americans rank twenty-eighth in average longevity—just above the Irish and the Cypriots (the Japanese top the rankings). “Ask yourself this,” Komlos said, peering at me above his reading glasses. “What is the difference between Western Europe and the U.S. that would work in this direction? It’s not income, since Americans, at least on paper, have been wealthier for more than a century. So what is it?” ...

Immigration, as the article goes on to clarify, isn't it. The once very short Dutch, who are now among the world's tallest, and tall Guatemalan Maya children who are raised in America, tell a different story. Indeed, even wealthy Americans are eating worse, and it shows:

... Steckel has found that Americans lose the most height to Northern Europeans in infancy and adolescence, which implicates pre- and post-natal care and teen-age eating habits. “If these snack foods are crowding out fruits and vegetables, then we may not be getting the micronutrients we need,” he says. In a recent British study, one group of schoolchildren was given hamburgers, French fries, and other familiar lunch foods; the other was fed nineteen-forties-style wartime rations such as boiled cabbage and corned beef. Within eight weeks, the children on the rations were both taller and slimmer than the ones on a regular diet. ...

People's heights depend on their levels of nutrition and access to healthcare. The United Nations, as the article points out, has been using average heights (which differ very little between most populations) as a proxy for estimating overall health for some time in light of this knowledge. And while there's a maximum likely height, the US is trending away from it. We're feeding nearly everyone poorly now, but especially low income families who can often only afford that fast food.

Do we want future generations of our fellow citizens to be stunted? I would hope not. Think about that next time you hear someone complaining that food stamp benefits are too generous, or that fresh vegetables are wasted on the poor.

Everyone needs access to good nutrition:

... It is almost impossible for the average food stamp recipient, who gets about $270 a month, to eat according to dietary recommendations, O’Neil said.

Methods of stretching dollars, like shopping at a variety of stores for sales, often are not an option for families with limited transportation, she said. ...

When we have the equivalent of a Growing Power in every city, maybe it won't be such a problem. But for now, it's important at the least to change attitudes about how we feed each other. The health of low income families in Louisiana, Detroit, or any other centers of urban and rural poverty, ultimately reflects on all of us as a nation.