Is it Evolution?

That's interesting, Joelsnan. It reminded me that I have my father's army records from the second world war. When he joined up at 19, a year before the war started, he was 6ft. 1in. tall. When he left he was 6ft. 2.5in. He had a maximum chest size of 32" and weighed 144lbs. on enlistment. He was obviously undernourished, considering he worked at Covent Garden and did a lot of lifting and carrying. I'd like to know how he grew 1.5" in 8 years.

Journal Reference:
T. J. Hatton. How have Europeans grown so tall? Oxford Economic Papers, 2013; DOI: 10.1093/oep/gpt030
Yes, it states that the increase in height continued through the war years which seems strange considering food shortages during the war.

Why am I only 5ft. Am I evolving into a short fat person.

I read this weekend that WW2 food rationing gave us a better balanced diet and resulted in the average height rising by several inches (I think it was 4 which seems a lot!). I was very surprised because the word rationing sounds like we have to do without! Clearly less is better for us (or maybe we already knew that??)

On a personal note, looking back through photos of parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all I know is that despite our varying diets (imposed and chosen) I am exactly the same shape - although taller - as the other women in my family...

Reflection of just how awfully malnourished the poor were in the 1930s mollie - have you read The Road to Wigan Pier? The bit about the tripe? and the amount of white sugar they used to eat? pounds and pounds a week because it was a cheap source of calories.
It cannot be evolution in the Dawinian sense - it is impossibly fast for that to be the case.
Reduction in childhood illnesses may be a factor - vaccinations were introduced during the 20th c and I remember reading somewhere than multiple childhood illnesses delay growth.
It is probably, in the main, a combination of better nutrition and what we now call epigenetics. This is the influence of the environment in how the parental genes are expressed in their children. It means that we now appreciate that a mother who is well nourished in the womb and in childhood may have bigger offspring than they would have had if they had not. The genes are the same but they are expressed differently.
Take a look at some grandparents who have grown up in a poor Asian country, standing next to grandchildren who were born in the UK (or HK or Australia) and you will see how dramatic a change there can be in 2 generations.

Darwinian.
Children are also becoming more intelligent with each generation.

With conscription for war it became clear how badly nourished and educated the average citizen was.

I understand that 100 years ago people reached physical maturity a lot later. For men it was 25. When DGF enlisted in the army in 1900, after a childhood in poverty, he was aged 18 and was 5ft 8in tall. When I knew him he was a good 6 foot, with a bunch of 6 foot plus sons. Army life would have given him three good meals a day and he shot up like a beanstalk.

Didn't the UK government introduce something - was it free maternity care - because the conscripts in WW1 were such an unhealthy, rickety bunch?

I remember being shocked when I discovered the age of the grandmother of a Bangladeshi family I knew in Oxford. I thought she was in her seventies. Turns out she was only about three years older than me. I was, at the time, in my early forties, and Minibags hadn't even been born. Her grandchildren growing up in Oxford, were strapping, healthy kids. The ones I taught will be grown up now.

I do remember reading somewhere that following WWII the standard 6-foot long beds in American college dormitories all had to be replaced by ones measuring 6 feet 6 inches.

One of my grandsons is 6' 7"......

That is really worrying me. We are a family of short a***s but DDiL is 6 foot and DGS seems to get his genes for height from his mother.

I am just out to buy a ladder.

My Dn carried on growing until he was 21, which he was relieved about, because he had been shorter than his sister.

Perhaps we have reached the evolutionary limit with height and are growing outwards instead.

We're turning into Weebles...

As long as we wobble but don't fall down

Joelsnan, your point about us evolving into 'tall fat folk' made me chuckle ruefully; my own dad's army tales echo that user's WWII growth spurt, bless him, from lanky rationing days. And Mollie, spot on about those balanced plates—less sugar, more veg, who'd have thought? For me, it's epigenetics at play, like my grandsons towering over their Canadian roots, all thanks to better school lunches. But girth? That's our modern mismatch, isn't it—too many takeaways, not enough wartime resolve. Still, we're wobbling Weebles, as someone quipped, and proud!

REPORTED this thread is from 2014!

This is the third zombie thread OliviaRema has dragged up.

AlieOxon

One of my grandsons is 6' 7"......

I have a nephew who is that height. All the males in our family are over six feet, from my 89 year old brother to my 16 year old grandson.

Guilty as charged – you’ve caught me red-handed digging up these splendid old “zombie” threads! I do love a good rummage through the Gransnet archives when I can’t sleep; it’s like finding forgotten letters in the attic. If I spot one that still feels relevant I give it a gentle nudge and hope a few kindred spirits pop in for a natter. No harm meant, just keeping the conversation alive!
Thank you for the chuckle – you’ve made my morning.

why not just start a new thread on a similar subject/

It can be frustrating, even upsetting to see zombie threads resurrected years on.
OP may no longer be with us - in every sense, likewise other old friends RIP, the problem may have been resolved or gone away, it may no longer be relevant, adequate responses may have been given and solutions attempted.
Are there not more productive (and relevant) or even original ways of whiling away the midnight hours than flogging dead horses?

More recently, the effect of poor diet can be seen in elderly people in Southern Spain, who were malnourished under Franco's regime.
He raided their produce to feed the industrialised north.
Older poorer people in Southern Spain can bear witness to this.

I don't think Olivia has done anything wrong. She's not advertising anything and has commented on an admittedly, old, thread, but it could still be a subject for discussion.

Used to be that I could go through the Active list and about three quarters of the headings caught my attention. These days it's sometimes not even as many as three threads that I am interested in reading, let alone contributing to.

This one goes back, I think, to before I even joined!