Down here! Europeans tower over Brits
OUR European neighbours are looking down on us – and it’s nothing to do with Brexit.
For scientists have found that while British men and women are decidedly average in terms of height, some of our continental neighbours are the tallest in the world.
In fact, the top ten tallest countries are all European nations, according to the largest study of human height ever undertaken.
Dutch men, who have an average height of 6ft (183cm), and Latvian women – with an average height 5ft 7ins (170cm) – are now the tallest people on the planet.
British men came a mere 31st in the league table of tallness at an average of 5ft 10ins (178cm), while British women were trailing behind in 38th position at 5ft 5ins (164.4cm) – far below the Danish, Estonians, Serbians and Czechs, who were in the top ten for both men and women in the 2014 league table.
The study, discussed at the ESOF science forum in Manchester yesterday, involved the collection of height statistics for more than 18million 18-year-olds from 200 countries born between 1896 and 1996.
It revealed the British have at least improved their international position since 1914, when men came 36th in the global height league table at 5ft 5in (167cm) and women were 57th with an average height of just 5ft (153.4cm).
One of the biggest surprises from the study was that Americans are no longer among the tallest people in the world. In 1914, men in the US were the third tallest internationally, while women were fourth tallest. Now American men and women are ranked 37th and 42nd respectively. Scientists say that while other nations have continued to grow taller, Americans hit a ‘height plateau’ and stopped growing around the mid-1970s.
Lead author James Betham, a statistician at Imperial College London, said: ‘People have grown taller in every country of the world but these changes have been uneven.
‘The tallest now are entirely in Europe. The top four tallest countries for men are the Netherlands, followed by Belgium, Estonia and Latvia. The top tallest countries for women are Latvia, the Netherlands, Estonia and the Czech Republic.’
Adult height is determined by the genes you inherit as well as environmental factors, such as a diet rich in meat, cheese and milk. Children who are better nourished and live in better environments tend to grow taller than those who are badly fed or housed.
While the height of Britons has increased by about 11cm over the past hundred years, our growth is also slowing down according to the study, published in journal eLife. Though the US was one of the first high-income countries to hit the height plateau, Britain followed the same trend around the mid1990s, along with Finland and Japan. By contrast, Spain and many Latin American countries are continuing to grow taller.
The biggest increases in height were found among South Korean women, who grew by more than 8ins (20.2cm), and Iranian men, who were 6.5ins (16.5cm) taller.