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2月1日付、「Times Online」より。
「植民地時代から第二次大戦後まで、世界一国民の平均身長が高い国は、世界一裕福な国にふさわしく、アメリカだった。しかし現在では、ヨーロッパ人がそれに取って代わっている」・・・このような結果がミュンヘン大学とプリンストン大学の２人の専門家による「人間生態学紀要」の中で発表された。
平均身長が最も高い国を順番にあげると以下のようになる。
１．オランダ
２．ノルウェー
３．デンマーク
４．ドイツ
５．アメリカ
なぜこのような結果となったかについて彼らは、「ヨーロッパ人に比べ、アメリカ人はジャンク・フードを食べるからではないか。またヨーロッパに比べ、アメリカの貧困層の子供達の食生活が良くないことも原因ではないか」といっている。
現在、白人アメリカ人男性の平均身長は、オランダ人の男性よりも4.7ｃｍ低く、白人アメリカ人女性はオランダ人女性よりも5.7ｃｍ低い。
データはさまざまなものからのものを元にして作成されたとのことで、アメリカへの新移民は（アジアが多い）データの対象とはなっていないとのこと。
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,13509-2577471,00.html
The Times February 01, 2007
The Dutch get ahead for heights
Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor
Americans are no longer tallest people
Taste for junk food may be factor
Americans are not walking as tall as they once did.
From colonial times until after the Second World War, Americans were the tallest people on Earth, as befitted the richest nation.
But European nations have overtaken them, according to a study. The Dutch are now the tallest and the Norwegians, Danish and Germans have also overtaken the Americans.
Why this should be is a puzzle, admit John Komlos, Professor of Economic History at the University of Munich, and Benjamin Lauderdale, of the Department of Politics at Princeton, reporting in Annals of Human Biology.
Professor Komlos suspects that it may have something to do with the junk food trend that hit the US before Europe. Alternatively, the more equitable healthcare systems of Western Europe may enable more people to reach their optimum height, while many poorer children in the US remain deprived.
But these explanations are conjecture, he admits. What is beyond argument is that average heights in several European countries now exceed those in the US. The data come from a variety of sources. Regular health and nutrition surveys in the US provide data on adult heights. Data gathered on US military personnel provide another source.
European countries have also gathered reliable data as a basis for comparison.
The figures show that the average height of an adult white male in the US rose steadily until the generation born in the early 1950s. Average height then remained constant for a decade, increasing slightly among those born around 1980. The same trend was seen among white women.
The black population experienced a stranger trend. Black men were the most rapidly growing group until those born in 1970-74 — the first black generation to match their white counterparts. Since then there has been no increase.
Black women achieved parity with white women much earlier, at the end of the 1920s. But since then they have shown no increase.
While American growth rates were stagnating, those of Europe were surging ahead. The paper does not include British data, but shows that by the generation born around 1960, Dutch, Norwegian, Danish and German men were taller than Americans.
Today, the two authors say, young white American men are 4.7cm ( just over 1¾in) shorter than Dutch men, and white American women are 5.7cm (just under 2¼in) shorter than their Dutch counterparts.
“This is a stark reversal of the pattern in the mid-19th century when American towered over Europeans by similar or even larger margins,” they write.
Several obvious explanations can be dismissed. Immigration into the US is not a factor because the comparison is made between Americans of European descent and their opposite numbers who remained in Europe. The US Army data also make it possible to exclude first-generation Americans without affecting the results.
A second reason to dismiss immigration come from the data for black people. Their stature has stagnated even more than whites’, and there has been very litle black immigration into the US.
Genetics are ruled out as genes do not change that fast, and 50 years ago Americans, with the same genes, were taller than Europeans. All that is left is environment. The first possibility is diet. “There are reasons to believe,” the authors say, “that US diets are deficient to some extent as nearly a half of household food expenditure is spent on food outside of the home.
“Meals consumed out of the home are less balanced than those consumed at family dinners. Yet the extent to which these differences might affect final physical stature has not been investigated.”
A second possibility is healthcare. “Socio-economic inequality in America is much greater than in Western Europe and inequality has a negative effect on height,” the researchers say.
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