I am a person like to travel all over the world, and I have been to several countries like China, United States, Thailand, Holland and Japan. Except enjoy the beauty of these countries, I found a fun phenomenon that these countries citizens height are significantly different. Like Dutch people are the tallest people I ever see in general; the Japanese’s height are the shortest in these countries. And I found out that White people’s average height is taller than Asian people. Does people’s height entirely depend on their race?
To make sure this is not base my judgment on intuition, I did some research about people’s height all the continents. This graph is the height development by World Regions – Baten & Blum (2012) 0. Carefully analyze the data, it shows the North America/Au/Nz have the tallest height, Africa in the middle, and almost all regions in Asia are at the bottom of the data set. This analysis shows people in North America taller than Europe, Europe taller than Africa, and Africa taller than Asia. 
So, we can see the people’s height is significantly different from continents to continents. But does that means White people taller than Black, and Asian are the shortest? The actual situation may not like this. In the United States which made up the most population in North America, there are only 62.6% citizens are White. Rest of population is other races, and the average height of North America is taller than Europe, where a white people lived. And Asian’s height are significantly shorter than North American and Europe. Combine this information, races did affect human’s height, but what else have an effect on height?
For better know what else change the person’s height, I did some research to find out. Here is an article talks about genetic things and nutrition affect human’s height. Scientists made experiments shows height is 60 to 80 percents determined by the genetic stuff. It is not hard to explain this; you must notice that if person’s family members are all tall guys, this person probably be a big guy at least not short. In opposite, If the guy’s family members are not so big, this guy will have a small chance to be a tall man. This genetic factor of determined how a person’s height situation have been using by police. We can see this from the news or some television drama that police took the criminal’s DNA and test criminal’s height and race. The other primary factor is nutrition; it took 20 to 40 percents of your size. Obvious, human needs various and a host of nutrition to grow their body, once the food satisfies the body’s needs, people will grow taller. We can see African Americans are usually taller than Africans, on of the reason is the African Americans have a better diet than Africans in general. Here is an article shows how much nutrition children need to grow healthy
In conclusion, races do affect people’s height but more importantly is the genetic factors and the nutrition. There may not be the only factors determine human’s height, and there may have third variables that need to be discover. The genetic things have an impact on a significant part of human’s height. But enough food may improve your height. So you want to become taller? Eat more food and balance your diet!
Thanks Wencong, this is really interesting and applicable to me as I have always wondered why everyone in my family is so tall. Of course, I know as most do, that genetics are a huge part of it which is obviously intertwined with the presence of race in this question.
However what I think is more interesting is the personal presence of hormones in the body and how they affect growth. I found this article that goes into every influence and idea connected to human growth: http://www.humatrope.com/about-growth.html
I really think its fascinating to address these factors in our lives because they may be crucial to fully understand later in life, but perhaps its not just race, genes, and hormones, do you think that maybe its a geographical influence? Possibly where we live determines how much our family will grow or not grow. I hope we can get to a place in the future where every piece of every factor of human growth is identified.
This was a very interesting article. When I was younger, I was always the smallest in my class and I absolutely hated it. I waited for the day that I would grow – but little did I know it would take a while. It was not until my sophomore year when I grew five inches in one year. Why was this? I decided to look up a little about growth spurts. This article explains a little bit about growth spurts. It explains that usually one grows from the ‘outside-in’ meaning that ones hands and feet tend to get bigger before the rest of one’s body. In my case I agree that does happen! I hope you read that article and enjoy!
It’s interesting, I knew that height was primarily based on genetics but I didn’t realize that nutrition actually had an affect! I always thought that it was a myth and not true when people said “drink your milk or you won’t grow big and strong!” I am fascinated that no other factors come into play? The disparity in average height between some countries is so big that you would think climate or culture difference has some kind of impact. It’ll be cool to see if any studies come out in the future suggesting that they do!