UK children shorter than EU children

[Popcorn121]

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/21/children-raised-under-uk-austerity-shorter-than-european-peers-study

I listened to James O’Brien on LBC today talking about the above, the conversation was all about UK poor diet and parents being blamed for not feeding their children well (due to austerity). But AIBU to think that height is mostly determined by genetics? Yet this isn’t mentioned, maybe people in the UK are more likely to be shorter due to genetics? I’m shorter and ex is on the shorter side, even though I feed my kids fruit and veg and healthy protein like salmon and chicken they are still going to be short. I know a lot of families like this.

*bigger!

fwiw my mil grew up in post war germany and was 'verschickt' (sent to feeding camp) because she was malnourished.
she is quite tall (5.9) whilst her older sibling (too old for feeding camp) stayed noticably smaller.

You think the child growth experts at GOSH quoted in the article don't understand the impact of genetics on height?

Are you simply a conspiracy theorist when it comes to medical experts? 25% of people are now, post-covid. The fact there are many of them doesn't make them right.

British dairy cows aren't given hormones though
www.which.co.uk/news/article/milk-myths-8-common-cows-milk-concerns-debunked-ad0070G46Mnl

Really? I think everyone seems tall in comparison with when I was teen. Average hieght for a woman then was 5'4. Now it's more like 5'6"

Presumably the extended family were not committing incest and were not all inbred. They would have bred with a very different population from each other which would account for a lot of the differences

But the French eat meat and dairy. Vegetarians are far fewer there let alone vegans. French are short

Graph of findings

So do the Italians. Who are even shorter. The French are part Northern European, Norman/Viking stock and the other part shorter Mediterraneans.

Here's another article on it https://www.itv.com/news/2023-06-21/british-children-shorter-than-other-five-year-olds-in-europe

So according to the graph, we have been smaller than the French for decades?

If you click on it the graph is about 5 year old UK boys. It's contained in the article I posted

"In 1985, the UK recorded the 69th tallest five-year-olds in the world.
But this has significantly dropped to 96th for girls, and boys' average heights have fallen even further, to 102nd place.
“They’ve fallen by 30 places, which is pretty startling,” said Professor Tim Cole, an expert in child growth rates at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London told The Times newspaper. “The question is why?”
The professor, who was not involved in the most recent study, said wider data on the height of 19-year-olds suggested that growing up in the 2010s “which happens to coincide with the period of austerity . . . tells me that austerity has clobbered the height of children in the UK.”
In 2020, an Imperial College London team behind a study into height of children up to the age of 19 warned nutrition - and especially a lack of quality food - may lead to stunted growth.
They found global height rankings for the UK had worsened over the past 35 years, with 19-year-old boys falling from 28th tallest in 1985 (176.3 cm) to 39th in 2019 (178.2 cm), and 19-year-old girls from 42nd (162.7 cm) to 49th (163.9 cm).
Speaking in 2020, when the study was published, Professor Majid Ezzati, senior author of the study from Imperial’s School of Public Health said: “Children in some countries grow healthily to five years, but fall behind in school years.

Can you not see the gap between France and UK is widening significantly? That is the point.

Do you have a source for this please? Because I could only find this site which suggests otherwise:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/332542/height-of-individuals-by-gender-in-england-uk/

Diet is only taken into account with height with regards to malnutrition. You can not feed a child tall who is already eating a very healthy diet, they will just reach their genetic height.
If a child is malnutritioned, it will obviously have issues with regards to many aspects of its development. Or if it is not naturally producing enough growth hormones natrually they can be helped.

Feeding a natrually small child cheese, milk and meat all day long wont make them 6" tall.

@WhisperingAutistic exactly

I've seen the height difference between North and South Korean footballers, and it's extremely significant, after just a couple of generations. Malnourishment has serious effects.

Good nutrition will allow you to meet bit not exceed your genetic potential. I suspect immigration in the last 30 years and a gene pool of shorter alleles is largely the cause.

Why is being tall seen as such a great thing anyway? My kids are going to be bloody massive. Constantly into the 97th centile and I just see a lifetime of them hitting their heads on things.

there’s got to be other markers for the health of a generation other than height.

Is there any actual evidence that it's healthier to be taller, (if it's genetic, rather than malnutrition) I know it gets bandied around on Mumsnet as if it's fact? DHs parents both lived to their late 90s, 4ft 11 & 5ft 6. Do Dutch people really live longer than British people?

Really? All the young people I know are enormous these days!

Exactly, the majority of smaller people are that because of genetics, food will not help you exceed your natural genetic height, naturally nothing will.

Reading the article it shows that our children are on average taller than before, but it is comparing us to other countries who are on average growing taller.

This.

I thought the article was illiterate.

• In 2021, 28.8% of live births were to non-UK-born women; this is a decrease from 29.3% in 2020.
• The total fertility rate (TFR) increased for UK-born women to 1.54 children per woman; the TFR for non-UK-born women remained at 2.03 children per woman.
• In 2021, Pakistan remained the most common country of birth for non-UK-born fathers; Romania was the most common country of birth for non-UK-born mothers, and this was up from second in 2020.
• Albania moved into the top ten most common countries of birth for both non-UK-born mothers and non-UK-born fathers for the first time.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/parentscountryofbirthenglandandwales/2021

Compare this with the Netherlands. I couldn't find corresponding data but I could find info on country of origin of people born in the Netherlands with one or both foreign born parents:

On 1 January 2021, the Netherlands had 15 million residents born in the Netherlands (Table 5.1.1), 2 million of whom are children of migrants (formerly referred to as second-generation migrants). They have one or two parents who were born abroad. Just over half (1.1 million) of them have one foreign-born and one Netherlands-born parent, just under half (890,000) have two foreign-born parents. Almost 2.5 million residents of the Netherlands are migrants, i.e. people who were born abroad (formerly referred to as first-generation migrants). The vast majority of this group have two parents who were born abroad (2.2 million).
Of the 17.5 million people who lived in the Netherlands on 1 January 2021, 14.0 percent were not born in the Netherlands (migrants). Another 11.4 percent of the population were born in the Netherlands as the child of (a) migrant(s) (with at least one foreign-born parent).

On 1 January 2021, nearly 2.5 million residents of the Netherlands were born abroad. Under the new classification, two-thirds of them (1.6 million people) have their origins Outside Europe (Table 5.2.1, Figure 5.2.2). Among the traditional countries of migration, the group born in Turkey is the largest (201,000), followed by migrants born in Suriname (178,000) and Morocco (173,000). The Netherlands is also home to a relatively large group of migrants born in other Asian countries (497,000 people).
Of the 890,000 residents born in the Netherlands with two foreign-born parents, by far the largest group comes from Outside Europe. One-fifth (188,000) are of Moroccan origin, and a slightly lower number (164,000) are of Turkish origin.

And general speaking Indian nationals are the largest foreign born group in the UK:

In 2020/21 there were approximately 896,000 Indian nationals living in the United Kingdom, the highest non-British population at this time. Polish was the second largest nationality at 682,000.

Put simply we know that India has one of the shortest average heights in the world, which have a high percentage of the population who were of Indian origin. Pakistan was the country of origin for the most babies with a foreign born father in 2021. Again Pakistan is right at the born for average height by country.

Our changing demographic and the difference with the Netherlands who don't seem to have either India or Pakistan featuring in their most common foreign origins.

So genetically both countries are diverging. And this matters.

But when I've seen this data reported today there's been a distinct lack of comment on these genetic differences.

The drop is quite big so there is clearly something going on but I’m not sure if the data from the national child measurement programme is as robust in the covid/post covid years. They didn’t bother to come to my daughter’s school for example when her year was due to be measured so there could be anomalies.

I have one exceptionally tall child and one that’s shorter than average. I don’t think there’s been a difference in their nutrition.

I would also say you seem to notice (and the stats support) a bigger link between obesity and deprivation.

I thought the reasoning for the Dutch being so tall wasn’t just their love of milk and all things dairy but pork being large part of their diet

but then it is in Spain to (became popular to eat show you were not Jewish) yet Spanish are definitely quite a bit shorter than the Dutch and I think English maybe less dairy in their diet

its not unusual to see teenage boys to be 6’2 and girls 5’10 (I live in London) when I was young that was very tall