Why Americans Are No Longer the Tallest People in the World

Average height provides one of the best indications of a population’s overall health. Until the last few years, U.S. citizens were the world’s tallest and enjoyed better health than the people of any other nation. Things have changed, though. Now, western Europeans’ height exceeds that of Americans, and the difference is growing larger.

If there’s any question about the connection between height and health, consider that longevity has also decreased during the same time that height has dropped. References vary, but the usually-reported figure is that the United States is between 28 and 38 in the world for life expectancy, behind nearly all western European nations.

Having spent most of his professional life poring through historical records of height, Professor John Komlos of Germany’s University of Munich has become known as the pope of anthropometric – measurement of humans – studies. Komlos, his colleagues, and graduate students consider historical records of soldiers to be the mother lode for information about height. These records tend to be complete, are accurate about men’s civil status, and, of course, provide objective height measurements.

Over the last 1,200 years, a graph of the height of European men is shaped like a wide U. Charlemagne, who lived about 1,200 years ago, stood about six feet tall and his soldiers’ heights averaged nearly the same. As people moved into towns and cities, leaving their agrarian lives behind, and went into a feudalistic system on farmlands, resulting in food shortages for the masses, heights decreased. A thousand years later, during the French Revolution, the average male height was a mere five feet. Since then, height has increased substantially—that is, until recent years in America.

What can account for such a change? During the time when Europeans were losing height, the most obvious change in their lives was the development of cities and the move away from an egalitarian agricultural life. A very few, mostly the wealthy, were well-fed. The feudal system took most of the food away from serf farmers, giving it to the lords in taxes.

After the French Revolution, the average person became wealthier. Access to adequate food became more commonplace. Thus, people grew taller. Today, Europeans are the tallest in the world.

The tallest of all are the Dutch. In The Netherlands, the average man is 6′ 1”. Compare that to the average American man at 5′ 9-1/2” today.

Americans have historically enjoyed an abundance of good food. The land itself provided exceptionally well. Whether wealthy or poor, nearly everyone ate well. As Europeans have grown taller, their lifespans have lengthened, too. American’s lifespans have lost ground compared to the Europeans.

There are many ideas on why Americans are relatively shorter, but the only one that holds up to scrutiny is diet. Historically, the quality of diet has been associated with the economic well-being of a culture. That has not changed, though there is one distinct difference today — the type of food. Let’s take a look at suggestions for why the change in height.

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