British children are growing taller but not for the right reasons | University of Oxford
www.ox.ac.uk
A new analysis of Child Measurement Programme data from England, Scotland, and Wales challenges recent reports suggesting children in Britain are getting shorter. The analysis, conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford, reveals that average child height has increased over the past two decades. But these gains are not related to improved child health, the researchers
  • frongt@lemmy.zipEnglish
    281·
    2 days ago

    Being overweight or obese causes hormonal changes, which accelerate children’s development. Obese children grow faster, so they tend to be taller than their healthy-weight peers.

    That’s the tl;dr

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    121·
    2 days ago

    It’s weird to see people still think taller = healthier when we have decades of research showing that’s almost always the opposite.

    Like, you need proper nutrition to grow to max height, but that’s different for everyone and once you crack 6 feet there’s a bunch of random issues, even significantly higher cancer rates just because there’s more of you for solar radiation to travel thru.

    But mostly biomechanical issues because just increasing the size of everything x% across the board doesn’t work. Eventually it fails or wed have evolved to all look like Andre the Giant by now.

    Everyone always just thinks about a five minute interaction between a bigger and smaller caveman, but there’s more that goes into evolution and successfully passing on genes long term than winning a 2 minute fist fight.