Americans shrinking, Europeans growing taller

5'10"...unknown heritage. I am the test subject.

All the kids in my wifes family are progressively growing taller than each previous generation.
 
Frozzy said:
I know you didn't mean that, and it was a joke, but it justified a common anti-american stereotype among other people.

Sorry if you took it the wrong way.
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No worries..I'll just hit ya with another half dozen bouts of bad karma.......and I'll feel a lot better about it :swing:
 
Gonz said:
5'10"...unknown heritage. I am the test subject.

All the kids in my wifes family are progressively growing taller than each previous generation.
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Anomolies do exist. For instance, take Ireland during the 1800s, the average income would be quite respectable. Take away the gentry (but 1% of the populace), the average income would be pitiful.

It's a common problem with using the mean as the average. The problem I have with your statements is that these people who are "third world" Hispanics are still living, working, eating etc. in the same country as you are. It is very difficult to define an "American" or a "Briton" etc.
 
It's easy to define immigrant. The immigrant will not change much from the immigrant entry card. The subsequent immigrant children will benefit greatly from the immigration. My wifes father was born in Italy. Immigrated at a very young age. Taller than his father. His 3 sons are all taller. Their 9 children are all taller than their parents. Between Phoenix & Los Angeles I am reasonably initmate with several hispanic families. The kids are mostly taller.

American is hard to define. a Brit is less difficult (until recently)
 
Again, refer back to my 1800s Ireland example. Back in the early-mid 1900s, diet was "good" (i.e. nobody could even fathom obesity). Now, with the advent of junk food, and social changes the average USer is shorter.

It is impossible to say junk food is good for you. Having said this, during the late 1800s - early 1900s, European diet was subpar to the US diet, now it appears the roles are reversed.
 
Gonz said:
It's called inflation when expenditures rise faster than income. Also define struggling/value of home. If they spent 30k in 1983 & had problems it's struggling. If they spent 175k in 1983 they over spent.
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Interest rates in the 1980s were 15%, and my parents paid £40,000 for their house. Remembering that 25-year mortgages were a rarity at this time, let alone the 50-year mortgages now, being forced to pay £46,000 in a short period while average income was but a fraction of what it is now, it is understandable why it would be as hard to re-pay the mortgage
 
We are not shorter. We have slowed our growth. We have still grown beyond our forefathers. The American bloodline is more filtered through multiple ancestral tracts than Europeans who may finally be catching up to their ancestry. Junk food hasn't been a staple long enough & poverty & lack of healthcare are not our problems.

This shows that, around 1850, Americans - blessed with Western technology that allowed its citizens to spread unstoppably across the United States - lived relatively fine lives that let its menfolk reach an average height of 5ft 9in. By contrast, Dutchmen were only able to reach about 5ft 7in.

By the early 20th century the average American man was still about the same height as his predecessor. But the average Dutchman had nearly caught up and was only about half an inch shorter.

But in the 20th century Americans were overtaken. The average US male is now about 5ft 10in. The average Dutchman is just over 6ft.
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Sorry, not shorter than before but shorter in comparisons to Europeans.

Unfortunately for your statements, growth is not necessarily hereditary. Junk food lacks the "bits" which a balanced diet has and which made us grow taller. So, the fact that Europeans spend more on healthier foods in relation to income shows why they have grown much since 1850. In comparison, the "bits" (for lack of a better word) which were lacking in 1850, are still missing due to poor choice in food quality.
 
If I make $1,500 a month, and head on down to my local Food Maxx warehouse discount supermarket, spending about $200 for groceries to last the month, that's 13 percent of my income for food. Now if I find a better job and make $3,000 a month, which scenario is more realistic: (a) I spend the same $200 a month at the store, making me now spend 7.5 percent of my income on food; or (b) I decide the newfound money is burning a hole in my pocket, so I make every possible effort to spend $400 a month on food to feed the same number of people, keeping myself at 13 percent on food but spending twice as much?

With that in mind, can you see how it's ludicrous to compare percentages of income spent on food without giving figures for what the average incomes are?
 
You make a reasonable point. However, surely if the percentage is an average, then algebra says that it is equal to the average of the food spending over the income x100?

Though not an immutable law, I often think the higher the income the higher the costs.
 
Also, keep in mind that the US has the space and natural resources to grow the bulk of the food it needs. When certain fruits and vegetables go out of season here, they're imported from countries in the southern hemisphere where that particular food is in season. At that time of the year, the food becomes more expensive. There's plenty of farming still done in Europe, but there is simply nowhere near the amount of open, arable land as here. My logical conclusion, without having numbers in front of me, is that Europe has to import a lot more of its food than the US does, which would drive up costs.

I psid $1.67 for half a gallon of lowfat milk yesterday. That's just just under two liters. What would that cost where you're at?
 
About a year and a half ago it cost me £1.10 for ~ 1 litre of milk. So, it's quite a bit more. In New Zealand fuel is cheaper than bottled water, so go figure :p

Remember, of course, that there are a lot more costs for farming producers in the United Kingdom than in the U.S.

And yes, food prices are different. That's the point - Americans want cheap food at the expense of getting food not so good for their bodies compared to what Europeans are eating.

Atrazine (weedkiller) is banned in EU. Yet it's number one weedkiller used in USA on their agricultural crops.

Bovine somatotrophin (milk-boosting hormones for cows) are widely used in US. The hormone's not even licensed in EU.

Downer cows which Americans consume are unthinkable for food in EU.
 
Yet another "mine's bigger" debate.

I wonder if the investigators that did this study have an inferiority sensation when compared to the US.

As Oz jokingly put, I wouldn't be so worried about decreasing height, i'd rather be worried about the increasing width.
 
There is a worry about the increasing width. Due to the nature of our society it not only looks like they are worried about our health but also about setting up the fast fod producers as scapegoats & litigants.

Something that hasn't been adressed is why are we growing rounder? We haven't stopped getting taller. We have made our life so easy that we aren't burning calories the way we once did. Modernization is the culprit & I for one am glad. Mother nature will handle the rest.
 
Gonz said:
Something that hasn't been adressed is why are we growing rounder? We haven't stopped getting taller. We have made our life so easy that we aren't burning calories the way we once did. Modernization is the culprit & I for one am glad. Mother nature will handle the rest.
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Mother nature might slowly wipe your map.
 
What defeats me is "Who fucking cared enough to make a study of this, and who paid for it". Can't these assholes get real jobs?
 
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