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?

@Smartphonetoomuchoo

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

Yup.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_floresiensis#:~:text=Homo%20floresiensis%20(%22Flores%20Man%22,humans%20about%2050%2C000%20years%20ago.

Yes, people definitely are getting bigger. Some old cottages with low ceilings would be completely unliveable for today’s tall people! I think overweight women tend to have bigger babies, so I wonder if that plays into it at all. There is definitely a national component (don’t know if genetic/cultural factors/both). I visited Guatemala and I am 5’3 and was actually pretty tall for a woman there whereas when visiting the Netherlands I felt like Thumbelina.

Most people are overweight these days, but we are told that we should celebrate all body shapes. We shouldn't, the majority of us are fat, unhealthy and quickly catching up with the Americans. Stretch denim doesn't help as it just stretches with us....

Also, when I was a kid a few decades ago, girls tended to start with the first signs of puberty at about 10. These days it's not a rare sight to see 6 year olds with breasts starting to grow, I think this must be down to a combination of fat children and hormones in the water.

The overweight children at my children's school are often much much taller until they hit teens and then all the skinny beans take over. Whereas all the overweight men l know in their 50s are short. No idea why!

My mum was born in the 1920's and at 5'5" was considered tall in those days. Nobody that height would be thought of as tall nowadays.

I'm 5'7" and I was taller than most of my teachers by the time I left primary school.

I’m 5ft4 and was a totally normal height through school etc compared to my peers.
Now, when I walk through my children’s school, the girls in high school tower over me and they’re all very strong and fit looking. I look back on photos of me and my friends at school and we all look kind of pasty and weedy but the teens these days look like Amazons.

I got married in 1967 aged 25, and I was only just over 7 stones in weight, with a tiny waist. All my work friends were pretty much the same in the 60's. It was not considered to be like an anorexic situation, as people were more active then, as in cycling a fair distance to work each day, nobody had a car etc.. I used to do a lot of walking, and ballroom dancing, and my late Husband got me into rowing on lakes and rivers etc. There wasn't much junk food around then, except maybe some fish and chips on a Friday night from the local chippie. I just remembered the first Wimpy burger place opening in my town in the 60's. A lot of the youngies went out dancing a lot when all the rock and roll music got popular.

I don't ever remember any of the girls and women in the office where I worked, who were overweight at the ages of 20 to 30's. etc. And most of the girls I knew didn't drink booze all that much.

@SquirryTheSquirrel

Is that because overweight people statistically don't make it to old age in the same numbers?

Again, anecdotal, but I've known quite a few women who were overweight in middle-age/early old-age, but lost weight when they got to the 80+ stage - they seemed to have a much smaller appetite, perhaps due to general ill-health/aches and pains.

There's no impact on mortality rates of being overweight at the population level. The health impact really begins with obesity. If it's health we're worried, probably need to worry less about weight and more about physical activity. Healthwise, it's better to be overweight and physically active than skinny and inactive.

My kids and I are all very tall and I've always linked it to sleep. We are all Olympic level sleepers. On school holidays (and during lockdown, somewhat) they sleep as much as your average cat, with plenty of sunshine, exercise and good food in between, and I swear they are taller every time they wake up!

I don't think the lifestyles of previous generations really allowed for lolling around in bed on weekends and holidays, and t was frowned upon.

I’m 5”5 (well 5”4.5 to be exact) and I always felt quite tall especially in heels. Unfortunately during pandemic I’ve put so much weight on an can’t get rid of it. But it amazed me the other day that some kids and my daughters primary school in y6 were bigger than me - taller - I felt short!

Police museum had average heights of males arrested who were late teens/20s - 5ft 3 etc was norm similar era.

Looking at that, Henry VIII and his grandfather Edward were incredibly tall then, no wonder when Henry put in weight he looked so enormous to them.

Up until freezers were invented most children ate what was cooked by a parent ( usually mum) and dad's portion would be left warming in the oven.
The notion of serving high fat, neon coloured food eg fish fingers and chips didn't really exist before then.

It's worrying and sad that there are so many children and , indeed, adults , who absolutely refuse to eat anything other than chicken nuggets/pizza/fish fingers and / or chips or plain pasta, and is considered to have food sensory issues.
These foods barely , if at all, existed in early /mid sixties.

My parents are Eastern European and when I went to a friend's house for tea, I was served fish fingers , chips and peas, with white sliced bread and butter. I didn't know how to eat it.
Fish fingers didn't look like proper food.
It tasted so very lovely and I kept badgering my mum for this food forever.
She couldn't afford this food as she could only afford to cook one meal a day.

I persisted in my demands, as other tea dates revealed to me that 'English' food was what I wanted. I started to refuse my mum's home cooked food and my mum relented. ( this went on for a long time.)
I would shout and scream when my mum cooked her food and I refused to eat it.

Eventually, I got my way. My mum started to cook chips which I demanded every day. I got fish fingers, and I got pies!!! Oh my days!!! Pastry!!! My addiction to crap food began.
So did my waistline.
I became the fattest child at school. I was desperately sad about it and was bullied and poked fun at, even by the teachers , but my need for this high fat food was all consuming as it made me feel better.
In 1974 , my mum and dad sat me down and told me , in no uncertain terms, that the school nurses had highlighted my vastness ( I was size 20 at the age of 10!!!) and I'd been referred to Social Services. My mum told me , crying, that I couldn't eat my beloved pies, fish gingers, chips , crispy pancakes etc... any more as I'd be removed from my parents.

My agony wasn't that I'd be removed from my parents, it was that I couldn't eat my beloved shit food anymore!

Thank God that my mum saw the light of day.
She persisted and I started to eat healthier as I didn't want to be removed from my parents. My mum started by doing a hybrid of foods and I eventually started to lose weight.

By 14 I was size 14. I was also becoming more aware of excess weight, as a young woman.
At 18 I wore size 10.

Alas , my weight has fluctuated ever since, depending on IBS flares, which I attribute to my youthful shit diet.

Sorry, it felt cathartic to write this down.

Please don't give in to your children's demands and food sensory issues are a very modern thing. Real but modern.

Nutrition, especially having more protein, does seem to have an effect on growth and the onset of puberty. If you read the letters of J.S.Bach, working as a choirmaster as well as composing, you will hear the complaints about "losing" his best, well-trained trebles at 16 or 17, when their voices broke; one reason why today's trebles find his music so challenging; they haven't got the years of training under their belts before they stop being trebles.
The National Maritime Museum displays Lord Nelson's uniforms, and they look like stage costumes designed for a teenage boy.
The "Tall Girl" and "Long Tall Sally" chains of shops started up in the 1960's, when the baby boomers wanted fashionable clothes and couldn't find anything long enough in standard clothes shops.
I think this coincided with the beginning of the Welfare State; my DF used to remark, as I thundered through the house, "I blame the free orange juice!"

About 20 years ago I looked after an elderly lady who was about 5’9”.

She was almost 100 and told me how she was mocked at school for being ‘freakishly tall’. Back then she was like Amazon Eve.

Yes I am a person and I’m annoying getting bigger

I was tracing my family history a few years ago ond one of the things I obtained was my grandfather' WW1 war record. His height, weight and chest measurements when he enlisted were almost identical to my DD who was a teenager and in fulltime dance training at the time, so generally considered pretty slim! I think he was probably smaller than average at the time as we are a small family in general, but obviously not dramatically different to the norm. I don't think the army would accept him nowadays!