World Journal of Food and Nutrition
[ ISSN : 2833-3535 ]
The Dutch the World Tallest are Becoming Shorter. Why? Vegetables as Essential Nutrients Have Been Decreasing
Abstract
The Dutch have been the world’s tallest, with young men attaining 184cm in mean height in the late 1990s. They have shrunk by 1.0cm by the end of the 2000s. “Less varied”, “more oily”, diets, may have caused this change (USA Today; other mass media). According to FAO’s statistics, per capita supply of vegetables in the Netherlands has been remarkably less, compared to other North European nations, and only one-fourth, compared to South Korea, where young men grew taller in height more then 10cm since the early-1960s. “A high consumption of animal protein does not result in increasing body height if overall consumption of other essential nutrients is insufficient” [1]. Vegetables/fruit are considered essential to increasing body height on top of animal products [2,3]