The Taller the better
April 19, 2004
Anthropologist John
Kolmos from Munchen has recently determined that Americans have stopped
being the planet's tallest people a century ago.
This has been reported in a Friday's issue of the British newspaper Daily
Telegraph.
Today, the Dutch are considered to be the tallest. Actually, residents of
other European countries also appear to be taller than average Americans.
Kolmos has been studying peoples" heights for more than 20 years. He was
able to acquire anthropometrical data of various people beginning from 1700s
up until today.
According to his research, in the beginning of 19th century, Americans used
to be taller than the Dutch by 8 cm> and taller than the British by 3 cm. In
the middle of past century however, the situation has changed. Nowadays,
Americans appear to be 3 cm shorter than the British and 8 cm shorter than
the Dutch.
Kolmos draws a direct correlation between such results and the overall
lifestyle of the Europeans. Apparently, Europeans started to live better
financially. In America, on the contrary, the gap between rich and poor is
getting more and more obvious.
Kolmos considers that those who are fully financially secure, are able to
eat healthy, lead a healthy lifestyle and have access to medicare. The
researcher even came up with such indicator as the annual income per 1 inch
of height. In tall people for instance such indicator equals to 450 pounds.
Short people have a much lesser indicator. In addition, according to Kolmos,
tall people tend to live longer and are less likely to suffer from
depressions.