Why do people think northern europeans are neccesarily taller than southerners?

[Götterfunke]

No they would not. Dutch were among shortest Europeans century ago and skyrocketed in height due to dietary improvments.
Dinaric alps people are tallest Europeans despite many still don't have optional diet like NW Europeans.

The dietary changes account for all European countries. There is no country in Europe where people have to go hungry anymore.

Everybody from here to China can eat meat and drink milk.

The reason Dutch people are tall is because of their high nordic / faelid racial components, not because of their diet.

[Östsvensk]

Ex-Yugoslavs have even more med ancestry. They're still tall.

Mediterranid versus Dinarid. The latter is taller than the former.

[Jana]

The dietary changes account for all European countries. There is no country in Europe where people have to go hungry anymore.

The reason Dutch people are tall is because of their high nordic / faelid racial components, not because of their diet.

Whatever, they are shorter than southern Croats and Serbs and Bosniaks from dinaric alps who will grow even taller when diet improves.
Only Dutch women are taller than SW Slav women while men are shorter.

Deal with scientific facts.

[Jana]

The height of young men from Herzegovina aged 17-20 years is 183.4 cm, which is only a slightly lower value than in the wealthy and well-fed Dutch (183.8 cm)

In general, it seems that girls in counties with the tallest boys (around 184 cm) reach a height of approximately 169 cm (Table 4). This is a very tall mean, but not as tall as in the young women aged 20-21 years in the Netherlands (170.5 cm)

The sex differences between men and women in former Yugoslavia appear to be larger than the global trend line predicts.

The quality of nutrition in Croatia is still deeply suboptimal, which is a situation that has analogies even in other countries of the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia). Only Slovenia (1.56) and Montenegro (1.53) are above the European mean.

[Jana]

Probably most related to nutrition. I think I read somewhere that Serbs and Croats in Bosnia are slightly taller than Bosniaks due to pork consumption.

Yeah, that's true.

Furthermore, our comparisons indicate that local Muslim (Bosniak) men in Herzegovina are 2-3 cm shorter than Croats and Serbs living in the same regions or even the same towns. These differences in height are very strongly associated with the regional production of pork. Because pork is absent in the diet of Muslims for religious reasons, this result independently confirms the key role of high-quality nutrients from pork in child nutrition, as can be seen from our previous ecological studies (Grasgruber et al., 2014; Grasgruber et al., 2016).

[Östsvensk]

The dietary changes account for all European countries. There is no country in Europe where people have to go hungry anymore.

Everybody from here to China can eat meat and drink milk.

The reason Dutch people are tall is because of their high nordic / faelid racial components, not because of their diet.

Yes, all Europeans were roughly 10-13 centimetres shorter 100 years ago if you read older physical anthropology literature. There existed the same discrepancies then as today. Southwest Europeans like the Spanish and Portuguese were among the shortest and Balkan Slavs among the tallest then, and that is still the case today. Everyone grew the same during this period, basically.

[Universe]

The dietary changes account for all European countries. There is no country in Europe where people have to go hungry anymore.

Everybody from here to China can eat meat and drink milk.

The reason Dutch people are tall is because of their high nordic / faelid racial components, not because of their diet.

Yet they were among shortest europeans in 1800s... they changed their race?

[Jana]

This is interesting:

In the global context, there is possibly only one population that could potentially compete with the Dutch and Dinaric people for the tallest in the world: South Sudanese Nilotes. Shortly after World War II, the height of men from various Nilotic tribes ranged between 178.7–184.9 cm (Twiesselmann & Nyèssen, 1951; Roberts & Bainbridge, 1963; Crognier, 1973), with the sample of Dinka Ruweng being the most representative (181.3 cm, n = 227). However, it seems that due to war and famine, their height has decreased during recent decades (Chali, 1995; Rebacz, 2006).

[Jana]

Yes, all Europeans were roughly 10-13 centimetres shorter 100 years ago if you read older physical anthropology literature. There existed the same discrepancies then as today. Southwest Europeans like the Spanish and Portuguese were among the shortest and Balkan Slavs among the tallest then, and that is still the case today. Everyone grew the same during this period, basically.

Dinaric Slavs still didn't reach their genetic potential unlike Dutch though:

n any case, it is obvious that the genetic potential of Western Balkan populations is far from fully expressed due to troubled local economies and a relatively poor quality of their diet, but given the presence of these negative environmental factors, their tallness is even more remarkable.

This can be attributed to suboptimal living conditions which still do not allow the maximum expression of the genetic potential. There is little doubt that we could expect values over 185 cm in Herzegovina and its close surroundings, provided that living standards reached those in Western Europe—and some town means already markedly exceed this figure.

However they conclude height in Europe is still strongly a genetic predisposition.

Our previous study (Grasgruber et al., 2014) showed that genetic factors and nutrition are the two most important factors explaining geographical differences in body height across Europe

[Götterfunke]

Yes, all Europeans were roughly 10-13 centimetres shorter 100 years ago if you read older physical anthropology literature. There existed the same discrepancies then as today. Southwest Europeans like the Spanish and Portuguese were among the shortest and Balkan Slavs among the tallest then, and that is still the case today. Everyone grew the same during this period, basically.

Exactly. German males were considered tall at 175cm just 100 years ago. I remember an old taxi driver telling me how his grandpa was called "the tall one", he was barely 178cm, I was taller than that aged 13.

Japanese, Chinese, Koreans etc. also grew a lot, since meat and milk are omnipresent around the globe. They might be lactose intolerant, but that doesn't stop them.