Are people getting bigger and bigger

[Omydearehert]

When I look at old photographs everyone seems quite regularly sized, not too dissimilar from today (discounting the majority of us who are overweight that is). But then I look at my family photographs and remember that my grandmother was 153cm tall and didn't look unusually short (1930s).

I attempted to try on a pair of 50s gloves in an antique shop and I (smallish hands, 5'2) had no chance of fitting my sausages into them.

My significantly younger siblings and their friends tower over me. Both of them wear larger shoes than I do.

I seem to have completely forgotten how to properly phrase my question, but am I going mad in thinking that it's as if every few years the children born grow bigger than the ones before?

I’m not sure. My sister and I had same parents and upbringing/food. She is 5ft4 and size 5 feet. I’m 5ft 9 and size 8 so I don’t know how it can be explained with foot etc.

I'm not so sure about "better nutrition" considering the size of a lot of people now. Too much crap food and very little exercise.

If you go to the Fashion Museum, you will see that the old dresses from 1950's back to Victorian and Georgian times are made for tiny tiny women. They were short as well as tiny in frame, more like preadolescent children size nowadays. So, yes, bigger all over, shoes the same, no-one would have a hope of wearing old shoes!

Sometimes it's also the amount of calories in the food vs what it is, e.g. A choc yoghurt around 220 calories, yet very easy to eat and not even feel full, then if I'm not e exercising enough, it all adds up over e.g. A week, month ect

I no longer live in the UK. I returned to visit a few weeks ago. I was so shocked. Everyone seems huge compared to the country I live in. I was genuinely perplexed

@DumplingsAndStew presumably but perhaps children are taller before reaching puberty.

@allNavigatingAdolescence yes. Probably 5 over the course of a week for many. We have these giga ntic supermarkets full of carbs and cheap sugar-laden shite. When I go shopping now I find it really depressing. Most of us are essentially sugar junkies being kept on this kind of diet by companies producing masses of highly palatable, cheap, sugary food.

I’m in my 40s. There was one overweight kid in my primary school class. How many are there now? The obesity crisis has mushroomed in one or two generations.

I’ve just studied this via the Wildfit programme. Eye opening.

[quote flibberyjibbery8]@allNavigatingAdolescence yes. Probably 5 over the course of a week for many. We have these giga ntic supermarkets full of carbs and cheap sugar-laden shite. When I go shopping now I find it really depressing. Most of us are essentially sugar junkies being kept on this kind of diet by companies producing masses of highly palatable, cheap, sugary food.[/quote]
Indeed.

There is a maternal health aspect here as mentioned by PP. Bigger babies and their mothers receive intervention early so are more likely to survive - in our grandmother's day if they got stuck in the birth canal there were few options that didn't risk disablement or death for the mother and baby.

So does this mean that if we can go back far enough, then hobbits really did exist?

I’d love to know the average size and weight of newborns through the Tudor/Stuart/Georgian etc eras.

Would Victorian women have crossed their legs hearing about our average modern birth weight of 7 pound odd?

I'm glad to see that a thread about how better health and nutrition has quickly led into 'we don't know what a healthy weight is nowadays'. 👏🏼🙄

The MN teeny tinies never fail to disappoint.

Do you think the population getting bigger as a whole is a good thing or not? Just pondering

@mustlovegin

Do you think the population getting bigger as a whole is a good thing or not? Just pondering

I think greater life expectancy is a good thing yes. But with the number of anti-vaxxers around, I fully expect these numbers to drop off

Taller, yes! My teen SC and all their friends are giants.

While not dying young from disease and malnutrition is good, I’m not convinced getting bigger and bigger is going to help life expectancy. Most of the really old people I know are really small.

Check this out

www.google.com/amp/s/time.com/4423803/how-tall-100-years-height/%3famp=true

Apparently max height has peaked in countries like the US what increase in growth in Asian countries continues to soar

Definitely. I work with kids and a lot of 10/11 tower over me. I’m 5”4 which in my circle is on the shorter side of average but would definitely be short short now.

You can’t take surviving historical garments as representative because the smaller sizes are disproportionately likely to survive: they fit fewer people so they are less likely to be passed down until they wear out or remade or altered for someone else.
I do agree we are getting bigger though.

I definitely think we are getting taller.

My mum and MIL are about the same age (late 70s) - they are 5' and 4'11 tall respectively, and have size 3 feet. My sister and I, in our forties, are 5'3 and 5'4 with size 5 and 6 feet respectively. DH is 5'8.

My paternal grandmother was tiny - about 4'8.

I pass a school bus stop on the way to work and most of the teenage girls tower over me in height, even though my height is supposedly the average for a woman in the UK. They all seem to be slim so no anecdotal evidence there that height is linked to being overweight.

Yes, definitely. I am 5'9 but also morbidly obese. My Grandad was 5'4 and my Nan even shorter. Their daughters were 5'3 and 5'7 (my Mum born 1944) though. But often wonder when people say to me about being slimmer I always wondered what happened to my family in a late 1950's photo as they are obese or morbidly obese and even in younger years they were all larger than a healthy weight in the photos I have. My Dad was 5'10 in his prime but has shrunk. My Sister obviously missed the tall genes as she's 5'3.

I work in a care home and very few of the very elderly residents are overweight.

If you look at old arrest records it records height amongst other features. I’m 5ft 4 and if I had been transported to Australia I would have been one of the taller women.

But as well as height there is weight. In the 1970’s there was one really overweight child at my school. That was it, no one else.

I'm 5'2" and 40. When I was at school I was totally average height. Now I'd be really short. All the teenage friends of my DC are taller than me...and all their cousins