I'm also around 6 ft and I have never seen a Chinese Taller than an India.....may be a chinese is taller than an Indian dwarf!
Why are rich, well fed, non malnourished Chinese in Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau(some of the richest parts of the World-never mind Asia) below 5ft 5in on average?? In India- physical gait, stature is directly proportional to socio/economic status. Won't find a lot of skinny, malnourished looking rich people in Delhi, Mumbai or Chennai. For example look at the current Middle Class generation, most kids male/female are on average 4-6 inches taller than their parents. How come NRI's born abroad or relocated at an early age so much bigger than their Indian counterparts??
For the same reason a poor African is more hung than Bill Gates ? Genetics determine your height, Nutrition/Environment dictate whether you can reach your potential. (Also Growth Hormones, Steroids in food chain might play a part) Studies after studies has shown that the faster you grow in puberty the earlier you will die aka Longevity corresponds to shorter stature. Look up IGF-1, Growth rate during Puberty and Cancer for eg.
As per some statistics Chinese are on an average taller than Indians. There is a thread on it too. 1. Also Chinese in Singapore, Taiwan and big Chinese cities are much much taller than their rural counterparts. 2. Indian teenagers in the cities these days are very very tall. 3. Even homeless, destitute African origin folks (esp East) carry more muscle mass than even your average protein guzzling gym fiend.
5ft 5in is pretty tall if you're including both genders in your study. For comparison, Indian men and women, averaged together, are about 5ft 2in. On average, Hong Kong, Singaporean, and Macau men are 5ft 7in, and women are 5ft 2in, which averages to 5ft 4 1/2in. The current middle class generation is about 20-30% of Indian children. The vast majority of Indian children still face very real constraints on food consumption (in terms of both quality and quantity).
There could be one more reason apart from this. The more the children the less the money there is to go round in really poor families so undernutrition could increase. Also with multiple quick pregnancies maternal; anaemia could give rise to low birth weight children later who end up being shorter. But as an Indian who grew up in the 60s and was considered tall for that era I am amazed at what is happening with young wealthy India. They are not just taller, but they are all pumping iron and getting muscular. There is clearly a gap between the poor and the rich. Nothing like a bit of communism to set that right hain? Equalize everyone by force and then when everything is upside down start all over again and re introduce inequality in society like sons of Politburo. But I am joking. I personally believe that having a society where everyone is equally well fed and equally intelligent is wrong. Let some guys have smaller physique and brains too. They will be needed for some jobs. We can't make everyone a rocket scientist. We need people to do boring jobs like sitting outside an ATM for 12 hours a day. All these coercive ideologies - religious or political who seek to equalize are only seeking to push their ideology - not really equalize - which ain't nevah evah gonna happen.
Such papers don't contain any weight in practicality. Most of them contain lots of bias, many newspapers print such idiotic claims for just sensationalism. Many papers claim that they've done some retrospective study and present data of prospective, some journals and study publishing sites don't even check before approving such papers due to various reasons, don't believe most of them.
I find it surprising, that being a doctor you are not aware of the robust research into what I said. 1. Can you please show any scholarly works which show that IGF-1 is negatively linked with Growth ? 2. IGF-1 has no bearing on Cancer ? 3. Genetics don't play a role in determining height ? 4. Nutrition has no role in growth and development ? I would want to learn, because this is what I have believed for a long time. @hit&run
I would like to see the actual paper. It sounds as though it has been written by someone who has little idea about Indian society and somehow believes that Indians prefer their first child over others. This is nonsense. Even in the most biased poor families the bias is not towards the first child, but the first son. So if a family has three daughters and the fourth child is a son -the son is better fed than the girls - who would have grown up by then. the confounding factor is less money to go round with more kids, so less food. This is compensated by feeding the girls less or not sending them to school. Hence the government incentives for those ho have girl children and school meals aimed at girls in some places. Now if only the fodder thieves and children's food thieves who call themselves political leaders in India allowed the food to reach those who need it things might be different.
Well the paper itself looks OK - but I thought all the findings were well known - I have myself known it for decades. The authors say:
Hey bhagwan, please read my post, I was backing your claim and simultaneously saying that such studies like the one presented here by OP don't contain any weight.
