Help me find graphs of nutrition and health/height
June 17, 2009 5:31 PM Subscribe
Where can I find visuals (graphs or ?) that show the relationship between height and nutrition?
I would like to be able to help people in Asia who are short and eat primarily white rice understand that these are correlated. Also, visuals of disease and nutrition would be nice, but the main number one would be graphs (for instance U.S. from 1600 - present) of heights and nutrition. I thought I was good at using search engines until I just spent some time and failed miserably. Thanks!
I would like to be able to help people in Asia who are short and eat primarily white rice understand that these are correlated. Also, visuals of disease and nutrition would be nice, but the main number one would be graphs (for instance U.S. from 1600 - present) of heights and nutrition. I thought I was good at using search engines until I just spent some time and failed miserably. Thanks!
There was a nice new yorker article a while ago called The Height Gap centered around the work of John Komlos.
As far as I can tell his work is euro-centric but it could lead you in the right direction.
I agree with Miko that there is not necessarily a correlative between white rice and height per se, but between overall nutrition status of the population and its average height. Claiming white rice is the cause is getting a little too specific. Perhaps as this is a nuanced relationship, the data is presented in a more nuanced sense and that's why you're not finding a simple graph?
posted by Cold Lurkey at 6:02 PM on June 17, 2009
As far as I can tell his work is euro-centric but it could lead you in the right direction.
I agree with Miko that there is not necessarily a correlative between white rice and height per se, but between overall nutrition status of the population and its average height. Claiming white rice is the cause is getting a little too specific. Perhaps as this is a nuanced relationship, the data is presented in a more nuanced sense and that's why you're not finding a simple graph?
posted by Cold Lurkey at 6:02 PM on June 17, 2009
Correlation does not imply causation. You're aware of this, right?
posted by Metroid Baby at 6:02 PM on June 17, 2009
posted by Metroid Baby at 6:02 PM on June 17, 2009
Response by poster: Metroid Baby: Yes I'm aware of that. However, causality is conjecture and correlation is data. Giving people data, they can learn to draw their own conclusions, which is part of what I'm after.
Cold Lurkey: Thanks for the article. White rice of course is just a simplification but it's something people here can understand. It's their cultural history to eat 3 meals a day of white rice with just a small bit of dried fish thrown in.
Miko: I'm looking for the data. If it goes against the basic data of looking at what short, poor people are eating, vs what tall people are eating (in the most broad terms) I'd be happy to consider the implications of it.
It's amazing that they (health and human services departments) have billions of dollars they invest directly in Washington and in their researchers in Universities, yet they apparently don't have basic data readily available to help people understand choices that affect their health.
posted by peter_meta_kbd at 6:28 PM on June 17, 2009
Cold Lurkey: Thanks for the article. White rice of course is just a simplification but it's something people here can understand. It's their cultural history to eat 3 meals a day of white rice with just a small bit of dried fish thrown in.
Miko: I'm looking for the data. If it goes against the basic data of looking at what short, poor people are eating, vs what tall people are eating (in the most broad terms) I'd be happy to consider the implications of it.
It's amazing that they (health and human services departments) have billions of dollars they invest directly in Washington and in their researchers in Universities, yet they apparently don't have basic data readily available to help people understand choices that affect their health.
posted by peter_meta_kbd at 6:28 PM on June 17, 2009
Response by poster: So far there are some articles here which I found through Cold Lurkey's links, though all I've found so far are words - and one graph that illustrates the "exception" rather than the rule!
posted by peter_meta_kbd at 6:54 PM on June 17, 2009
posted by peter_meta_kbd at 6:54 PM on June 17, 2009
yet they apparently don't have basic data readily available to help people understand choices that affect their health.
I suspect that's because no such "basic data" exists. As I noted, height is a complex phenomenon, not attributable to single factors like diet. Wealth, healthcare (especially in early life), physical demands, and genetics are all strong players in the determination of an individual's height. And even though nutrition is another important component, what you say you're looking for:
the main number one would be graphs (for instance U.S. from 1600 - present) of heights and nutrition
...is a historian's pipe dream. Height data is very hard to come by before the 20th century. When do people get measured? Generally, when they go through a military conscription process, or perhaps sign on for a job. So the only way to know how tall people were is to look through ship manifests, mill records, and military rolls to create some sense of 'average' height in a given time period - understanding, even then, that the sample is skewed to be comprised of young men only. So people researching height over hundreds of years have to extrapolate from a very few pieces of concrete information.
Add to that your desire to see graphs of "nutrition" - how would that information be found? In what way could you determine what people were eating? In the case of soldiers and sailors, one can create a sense of their diet by examining provisioning records. However, are we sure that what they were eating after reaching adulthood has any impact on their height? Doesn't it make sense that childhood or even neonatal nutrition would have a stronger impact than anything eaten after the age of sixteen? How would we reconstruct the diet of an unknown person or group of people in 1650 with anything like scientific clarity?
I think setting out to prove that a point as narrow as "white rice = short stature" is going to prove much more complex than it initially appears. Diets in other cultures and at other times have been equally nutrient-poor; think of Northern and Eastern Europe where for a few hundred years the pre-industrial diet was largely potato-based and low-protein; or Ireland during the famine.
I think what science has concluded from comparitive studies of the data that is available is that a variety of food types - balanced nutrition, that is - correlates with increased population height, but only up to a point. Height does not necessarily continue to increase indefinitely in populations. And sometimes there are declines in height which are unexplained. Then, too, some well-nourished populations remain short in stature. So the best one can say is that overall, peoples who have a well-balanced diet tend to be taller on average - but so do people who have proper health care, including neonatal, and people whose genetic predisposition is to be taller.
If the US government has any responsibility, it's not to eliminate white rice but to share general nutrition information, which they already do. I don't think a graph is going to solve the problem of deeply ingrained cultural habits leading to the intake of a very narrow range of foods. That's more of a soft science. And even if such a graph could exist, it would not help adults or even children who are already growing - it would have to be used to transform national food policy country by country, aiming at the next generation and beyond. And I'm pretty sure US foreign policy already does aim to do that, though often stupidly.
posted by Miko at 8:00 PM on June 17, 2009 [1 favorite]
I suspect that's because no such "basic data" exists. As I noted, height is a complex phenomenon, not attributable to single factors like diet. Wealth, healthcare (especially in early life), physical demands, and genetics are all strong players in the determination of an individual's height. And even though nutrition is another important component, what you say you're looking for:
the main number one would be graphs (for instance U.S. from 1600 - present) of heights and nutrition
...is a historian's pipe dream. Height data is very hard to come by before the 20th century. When do people get measured? Generally, when they go through a military conscription process, or perhaps sign on for a job. So the only way to know how tall people were is to look through ship manifests, mill records, and military rolls to create some sense of 'average' height in a given time period - understanding, even then, that the sample is skewed to be comprised of young men only. So people researching height over hundreds of years have to extrapolate from a very few pieces of concrete information.
Add to that your desire to see graphs of "nutrition" - how would that information be found? In what way could you determine what people were eating? In the case of soldiers and sailors, one can create a sense of their diet by examining provisioning records. However, are we sure that what they were eating after reaching adulthood has any impact on their height? Doesn't it make sense that childhood or even neonatal nutrition would have a stronger impact than anything eaten after the age of sixteen? How would we reconstruct the diet of an unknown person or group of people in 1650 with anything like scientific clarity?
I think setting out to prove that a point as narrow as "white rice = short stature" is going to prove much more complex than it initially appears. Diets in other cultures and at other times have been equally nutrient-poor; think of Northern and Eastern Europe where for a few hundred years the pre-industrial diet was largely potato-based and low-protein; or Ireland during the famine.
I think what science has concluded from comparitive studies of the data that is available is that a variety of food types - balanced nutrition, that is - correlates with increased population height, but only up to a point. Height does not necessarily continue to increase indefinitely in populations. And sometimes there are declines in height which are unexplained. Then, too, some well-nourished populations remain short in stature. So the best one can say is that overall, peoples who have a well-balanced diet tend to be taller on average - but so do people who have proper health care, including neonatal, and people whose genetic predisposition is to be taller.
If the US government has any responsibility, it's not to eliminate white rice but to share general nutrition information, which they already do. I don't think a graph is going to solve the problem of deeply ingrained cultural habits leading to the intake of a very narrow range of foods. That's more of a soft science. And even if such a graph could exist, it would not help adults or even children who are already growing - it would have to be used to transform national food policy country by country, aiming at the next generation and beyond. And I'm pretty sure US foreign policy already does aim to do that, though often stupidly.
posted by Miko at 8:00 PM on June 17, 2009 [1 favorite]
There are some promising graphs in this book. See, in particular, pp 13-15. A search of Google Scholar using the title terms height and nutrition led me there.
posted by acridrabbit at 8:01 PM on June 17, 2009
posted by acridrabbit at 8:01 PM on June 17, 2009
Response by poster: Cool resource, acridrabbit. I just found one chart of Sweden from p 19 starting with your link ending here. For some reason google doesn't allow me to read p 13-14 of the book you found, maybe different geographical zones have different page limitations.
I'm wondering after all this research by all those here (thanks) whether maybe studies with animals might have clearer data: as Miko points out, there are so many variables and the data is not very accurate or complete.
And yet, I know North Koreans are shorter than South Koreans, I know Philippinos and other SE asians who have low-nutrition diets are shorter than those with better diets here and their children elsewhere.
posted by peter_meta_kbd at 3:20 AM on June 18, 2009
I'm wondering after all this research by all those here (thanks) whether maybe studies with animals might have clearer data: as Miko points out, there are so many variables and the data is not very accurate or complete.
And yet, I know North Koreans are shorter than South Koreans, I know Philippinos and other SE asians who have low-nutrition diets are shorter than those with better diets here and their children elsewhere.
posted by peter_meta_kbd at 3:20 AM on June 18, 2009
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posted by Miko at 5:47 PM on June 17, 2009