There was a study last year that pointed to Dutch women preferring tall men as the most probable cause of the rapid increase in height. [1]

[1] http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/did-natural-selection...

Interesting. Do you know if there are any cultures in which women prefer shorter men?

I think women liking tall men is pretty much universal which would lead to them getting taller and taller though evolution. As they men aren't all extra tall there are presumably counter factors like tall people needing more food in famines or having back problems I'd imagine. I heard someone say the average Frenchman used to be taller but Napoleon put a lot of the tall ones in his army and then lost them in battle.

Height has definitely transcended other physical traits like physical strength in terms of hunter-gatherer advantageous traits.

Women still prefer many of these physical traits, but probably not as much as wealth, which is linked to intelligence, which comes by default with age.

So you have to factor in what traits are conducive to wealth accumulation, and the easiest and biggest one is probably longevity. If you can be an older, wealthier male with his shit together, that's probably one of the bigger factors over height.

It's important to note that women's preferences is not the only thing affecting evolution - shorter men can be selected due to higher survival rates (for example in jungles, as another commenter pointed out).

Definitely shorter people have higher survival rates, and also a short women would counter the taller man since half of the genes come from the women.

This is just speculation but I think most likely in a Jungle environment where being light on your feet helps during a hunt.

The role of environmental factors is much larger, just about everyone I know here in NL is taller than their parents.

I hear about this argument and I can't help myself wondering:

How many short men are getting excluded from gene pool as a result of this?

My take: almost none. They might get "less desirable" women, but otherwise all men and all women are going to pair up.

Personally, I find the Dutch diet to be pretty unadventurous and poor. Sandwiches predominate, with not a lot of variety in cooking. This may well be irrelevant to the OP; nothing but cheese sandwiches and sour buttermilk may well be the perfect diet for growing tall.

As for the Rotterdam argument, I suspect fresh food would have to be flown in rather than shipped, which takes weeks.

> nothing but cheese sandwiches and sour buttermilk

It's better than hamburgers an coke, or fish and chips and beer, I guess. Which are just as much b.s. stereotypical views of US and British diets as yours is of a Dutch diet.

Oxfam doesn't seem to agree with you, and ranks The Netherlands as having the best diet [1]. Dutch cuisine might not be very diverse (boiled potatoes, boiled veggies and some meat), but the Dutch eat a lot of food from other cuisines; pasta and rice dishes are very popular in the Netherlands.

[1] http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/good-enough-to-eat

Dutch food is the worst. The Dutch think of eating as a chore. When was the last time you went out for Dutch food? There's a reason the answer is never.

>> Dutch food is the worst >> When was the last time you went out for Dutch food? There's a reason the answer is never.

These two statements I can somewhat agree with, typical Dutch food isn't very special, all we have that could have some appeal is erwtensoep (pea soup) and pannenkoeken (dutch pancakes).

>> The Dutch think of eating as a chore

This is just plain and utter BS though, you couldn't be further from the truth with that statement. You see, Dutch people don't typically cook or go out for 'Dutch food'. Even the smallest towns have a variety of international restaurants and cuisine, supermarkets have a rich selection of international ingredients, cities are littered with shops that sell oriental ingredients, etc.

Tradionally, foods that are popular here (both to eat out or to cook) have always been very varied: indonesian, chinese, oriental/middle-eastern, carribean (suriname, antilles), european (french, italian, spanish), etc. This is probably because of the large cultural diversity of people living here, who brought their food tradition with them.

Of all the countries I've traveled to, the diversity of good food you can have is probably highest in the Netherlands. Compared to for example the US, where food and restaurants (even the expensive ones) are almost universally terrible, the eating culture over here is magnificent. Other countries usually have great food, but less diversity. This all adds up to a dining culture where 'the dutch think of eating as a chore' is an almost absurdist statement. People here like to cook and eat out, restaurants don't try to race you through 3 mediocre courses, straight to the check in the shortest time possible, like in the US, families or friends take time to eat together to socialize, etc. Eating is anything but 'a chore' for most people I know of...

Our main dishes may not be very imaginative, but there's lots of great stuff besides: old cheese, herring, stroopwafels, vla (custard), ...

When was the last time you went out for danish, swedish or finnish food? These countries are small and their food isn't known around the world, but that does not mean that it's bad.

Even living in the Netherlands, I've yet to see a restaurant where you can actually order typical Dutch foods, eg. the mentioned boiled/mashed potatoes + meat + veggies or stamppot [1]

I've heard foreigners being quite fond of 'stroopwafels' though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stroopwafel

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamppot

What restaurants do you go to? In the Netherlands, if you pick a piece of meat it's almost always served with potatoes and vegetables.

Depending on the season you can definitely order stamppot or hutspot. In most cities you can even order it and have it delivered, just like pizza.

True, you do get that a lot. Restaurant have nicer presentation than me and my mother do, I considered that more towards French cuisine [1] somehow.

I've never seen something like wortelstamp/hutspot (mash of potatoes and carrots) with a smoked sausage in any restaurant. That, to me at least, is the epitome of the Dutch kitchen.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_cuisine#Foods_and_ingre...

For reference, here is David Rosengarten, apparently a famous food critic, waxing lyrical about Dutch food (and the Netherlands in general): https://davidrosengarten.com/blog/hollandwhere-have-you-been...

How many countries the size of the Netherlands do have a typical cuisine that's recognized around the world?

Jamaican, Greek, Lebanese, hell even Belgian (mussels and frites!)

Size is no excuse.

So just 4? My point is there are not many countries that have highly recognizable cuisines.

Cuba? Greece? Portugal? Switzerland? Lebanon?

Dutch pancakes are delicious. I never would have thought to try savory pancakes with ham and cheese before I went to Amsterdam and visited a pancake house.

Worst is Dutch food ;)

Yes, but they are the best sandwiches I've ever had anywhere. The Dutch treat every sandwich like a little work of art, I've had countless since visiting the Netherlands that made me wish other countries knew what they were doing!

The strong emphasis on fresh fruits and vegetables (and fresh mint tea, which is as common as water in Holland) is also really nice compared to the greasy, messy, fatty foods of the U.S. and Germany.

I dunno. Just give me plain sliced bread with a slice of aged cheese (preferably "farmer's" cheese, i.e., unpasteurized), and I'm happy. No work of art needed.

I don't like fresh mint tea myself, but nowadays you can indeed get it literally anywhere drinks are sold.

I agree, the quality of Dutch cheese is excellent and can often suffice for a sandwich.

But there are many more elaborate ways the Dutch make sandwiches that continue to please me.

The foodies will probably lynch me for heresy, but I think the best diet/health advice is to seek boring food.

I just ate dessert, which consisted of the following:

Finely chopped red and green cabbage mixed with Greek yogurt, sprinkled with mixed dried fruit, a few apricot halves from a can and some chopped canned pine apple (canned fruit because I'm slack).

I wouldn't call it boring, but that has got to be bloody healthy, right?

The Netherlands actually is one of the largest /exporters/ of agricultural products in the world, second only to the US [0] & to the tune of 83% of its GDP [1].

[0] http://www.economist.com/news/business/21613356-dutch-farmer...

[1] http://www.nltimes.nl/2016/01/26/netherlands-agricultural-ex...

Interesting tidbit: when asked what's for dinner, the answer in the Netherlands usually only mentions the type of vegetables, even though meat is generally also part of the meal. The stereotypical Dutch dinner (the only warm meal of the day) consists of (cooked) potatoes, vegetables, and meat. (On Sundays, the warm meal moves to a delayed lunch time; the evening meal then is bread again. Social/regional variations possible, of course. Again, this is stereotypical of when I grew up in the '70s/'80s. We also ate pasta, rice, Chinese, and other stuff, don't worry.)

Do not forget kaaskroketjes!

Hmm, I didn't grow up with those. Anyway I'm more of a frikandel person than a kroket person.

  Sandwiches predominate, with not a lot of variety in cooking.

If you look at what people eat for a main course, it's more a cosmopolitan diet really.

  I suspect fresh food would have to be flown in rather than shipped, which takes weeks.

A lot of the fresh food is grown locally and really affordable, we have one of the largest greenhouse industries in the world.

You can go to the neighbouring Belgium to enjoy food.

I am Dutch and tall too. Way taller than my parents. However, I always suspected it has to do with things like growth hormone in meat instead of fresh food.

Growth hormones have been banned in the Netherlands since 1961 and usage wasn't widespread beforehand.

I agree, there probably are specific foodstuffs in our diet now (such as dairy & meat) that cause growth above other foodstuffs, but these have become more affordable across the board due to "early-access" availability in the distribution chain (with a major component of that being the port)

I am of Dutch descent, but I have never set foot in the Netherlands. Somehow, though, I am much taller (6'1) than my dad and his father, who were both pretty short (5'2).

I've heard the explanation that the tallness of the Dutch is because they consume so many dairy products. It sounds quite plausible to me, because if you look at the other countries in the top of the list, many of them are countries which consume a lot of dairy products as well. It even could explain why the Maasai are so much taller than other Africans, because they drink a lot of cow milk too.

I doubt it. I come from the South West of England (known for enormous consumption of dairy products) and people aren't tall. I'm just under 6ft and was tall there, whereas I'm short here in The Netherlands.

It's probably a combination of genetics, cycling everywhere and eating so many slices of brown bread and potatoes.

Basic statistics also plays a part: when comparing arbitrary groups you'll often see smaller groups as outliers. Both high and low. Dutch population isn't huge (16m) so that is also a contributing factor..

> often see smaller groups as outliers

Is there a name for that phenomenon? I saw a similar thing in some data that we were looking at recently, and it took a while to work out that the reason why one group's number was consistently a bit smaller than another group's number was that we were simply taking the max of a smaller group. it's obvious in retrospect, but can catch you out if you're not expecting it.

I'd like to have a name for it, a reference to send people to.

I think the terms you're looking for are local maxima and minima.

I have looked at the reference for this (1) and I don't think it captures the idea that statistically, small groups vary more.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxima_and_minima

Ah, I think I'm with you now. My stats is rusty, but I think what you're asking about is one of the fundamentals of variance.

I think this[1] Stats StackExchange answer frames it well.

[1]: http://stats.stackexchange.com/questions/129885/why-does-inc...

That is helpful, thanks. Especially this part:

> I believe that the Law of Large Numbers explains why the variance (standard error) goes down when the sample size increases. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers

So what I was looking at is the inverse of the law of large numbers.

Good point about the outlier bias for small countries. It could explain why Estonia, Latvia and Iceland are in the top 10.

Yeah, the Dutch may be more into carbohydrates than other countries.

Could this possibly be due to other environmental factors than nutrition? (i.e. epigenetics, location, lifestyle)

The absolute growth in average height? For sure. But a lot of these changes in lifestyle happened in steplock with other European countries (sweden, norway, germany) so they don't necessarily explain why we had such massive growths relative to other European countries. Epigenetics are interesting, offspring of survivors of the winter of 1944 (what we call "de hongerwinter") had a tendency towards obesity, more so than people who were born slightly before that winter. I'm not aware of any studies on height and epigenetics. Our country has always been prone to flooding, but if anything, such "evolutionary" pressures have gotten less as we developed more technology to deal with flood-prone areas.

There seems to be a link between obesity and a period of famine during gestation. Not sure about height though. http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2011/04/why-skinny-moms-somet...

Yes, the study mentioned in the 2nd paragraph is the "hongerwinter" study I mentioned int he previous comment.

I'd also like to call attention to Belgian men finishing a respectable second place for men (although Belgian women don't feature in their respective top 10). I would argue this supports my Port of Rotterdam and cost-effectiveness of produce hypothesis, as Belgium would benefit similarly from its proximity to the port, even though Belgian diet is a lot less dairy-centric than the Dutch diet. There should also be measurable differences between Flanders and Wallonia, due to Wallonia being more distant in km, but less so between flemish and wallonians in Brussels, because of the "wallonian enclave" situation (even though the diets supposedly differ)

If anyone feels like testing this hypothesis..

As a someone born abroad to a dutch parent, I'm not convinced of the diet argument.

I'm 6'3" and that has nothing to do with the boiled meats and sugar diet so prevalent in Nederlands.

I suspect its down to breeding more than anything else. Although that doesn't explain such a massive change over less than 5 generations.