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.

But weight and height are different, being smaller doesn’t mean lighter. I thought british kids were on the heavier side compared with europe. Sorry I’m struggling to understand, do you mean an agenda to make Britain look bad? A negative spin as it were?

Whats the potential angle of the study? I’m not being goady I just don’t understand what anyone would get out of a study saying british kids are shorter than kids in other european countries?

I wasnt actually referring to this study, i was agreeing with a PP about the importance of finding out more about the information you are being fed by newspapers and any studies, rather than just assuming because its from a certain body, its finding are to be interpreted as said body are presenting it to you and that if you looked in more detail it actually could be presented differently, giving a different narrative. As in alot of cases.
Looking into the chosen demographic of the kids, the scope of the study etc etc.

Making sure it's not someone peddling their own (or their funders) narrative of, i don't know, politics and certain parties, brexit or any other hidden agendas that could be at play.

The quality of scientific journalism in the guardian has taken a massive nose dive unfortunately.

I mean, there must be many, many academics studying the biology of human growth and development. We don’t need simplistic ‘U.K. bad, EU good’ explanations of anything, and I say that as a left-leaning remainer.

I was beginning to think I was a lone voice crying in the wilderness!

Absolutely not. Most of my friends do exactly the same.
Sadly the same cant be said for a few of my family.

I know that. You know that. I was just using it as a random (and clearly daft) example. But a few papers have a readership who could have the wool pulled over their eyes very easily. Some people's comprehension skills leave a lot to be desired.

Quite so.

They didn't merely report the findings, they used them as a blunt instrument to support their political agenda.

also, why does the guardian (and many other outlets’) articles have such poor accessibility and writing standards? Why hyperlink over a word like “austerity” rather the actual link to the referenced study? Are these links in subscriber-only content? Or just … not there at all? It always used to be the case that journalists linked their sources, has that all gone now?

It's in the penultimate paragraph of the piece and should be capitalised:

"Non-communicable diseases risk factor collaboration"

https://ncdrisc.org/

Thanks, @echt, there is no link in the version I’m seeing but that might be because I’m not logged in to the graun.

I just can’t believe this is the guardian. I used to love reading it. Now it is pretty much just clickbait like the rest of online content :(

Height is not necessarily an indicator of good health, or rather not if you consider longevity the supreme indicator of good health.

Research shows that healthy smaller people live longer than healthy taller people. I believe the study of height and longevity in Japan showed the smaller men living on average 5 years longer than taller because they had a protective small height gene and because if you have fewer cells there are fewer possibilities of things going wrong.

There is also a school of thought that the reason women live longer than men is simply because they are shorter. ( Not entirely sure about this. Maybe the 'defective' y chromosome plays a part v 2 full 'X' ?)

Incidentally, all the Dutch people I've known have been arrogant sods, no matter how tall they were.

Charming… thanks for your insight.

9.3% reflects the percentage across all age groups if we're talking about just 5 year olds it's going to be much higher than that.

On the bright side, mammals tend to get bigger before they die out, so maybe stunted wee Brits will last a few centuries longer than our European counterparts when the world begins to end.

🤣🤣We will be able to hide in our hobbit houses

But ours are shorter cos their diets are not that great which won't be too good for longevity. In fact our population does not live as long as japanese does it. I know some would like to look on the bright side of things but this is stretching it a bit.

I blame all those small Vikings..

I always wonder about this, my kids are short yet they are the kids with the healthiest diets from our friends and family. We eat a lot of fresh food, not huge amount of sugars and just a round balanced diet, no takeaways, etc, yet they are shorter than their peers. I know kids that seem to survive on beige foods and sweets (with no overly tall parents) and they are so much taller than mine...

I find this to be the case also. My three children are short, my DD15 is almost 5ft 2 and I would say is at her adult height. My boys are tiny, average height for children 3 years younger. They eat very healthily, very little processed foods.

My DH family are small, his sister is 5ft 1in, her DH is short (about 5ft-5in), their 8 year old is taller than my 12 year. They would eat more processed foods, takeaways, soft drinks, sweets, etc.

There are times I genuinely feel like feeding my kids crap so they might grow and then switch back to a healthy diet!

@Diorama1 I used to wonder this too. All the kids who ate at MacDonalds a few times a week seemed to shoot up. I wondered if it was all the growth hormones in the beef to bulk out the meat being passed on to them, and sometimes wished DC had been burger-fed from birth. But they are small and they are fine. Being tall is just not necessary. Overrated. We already take up too much room on this planet as a species.

Are breast feeding rates comparable between England and Holland?

The article sounds like it is written from a press release.

The Guardian also no longer has the people who use to do it's scientific reports who would often dig further than the press release.

In fact some of the posters BTL in the Comments section now do a better summary of the research if an article is open to comments.

Me too! I just don't understand why any literature says kids are taller because of a healthier diet nowadays, very disheartening

Again - this is population level data. Averages. It doesn't mean x = y for everyone.