Statisticians like to tell the public that they are getting higher. It strengthens us. By the year 2250 we will all be seven feet tall, we are often told.
But this is not true. While ethnic Danes are getting taller and heavier, this is not the case with the overall population. Immigration and assimilation are stalling growth figures across Europe, and some have already begun to decline.
The average height for a man from Syria, for example, is 172 cm and from Eritrea 170 cm – two countries that have accounted for fairly large shares of immigrants in Denmark in the past decade.
Taller and heavier
Moreover, while the proclamation ‘Danish men and women are getting taller and heavier’, which gave rise to a TV2 story on Wednesdayis true, this is old news.
Other sources regularly confirm the results from the State’s Institute for Public Health at the University of Southern Denmark, which confirms that Danish men and women have added 2.8 and 1.6 cm extra in the period since data began to be collected in 1987.
Today, the average Danish man is 180.2 cm and the average Danish woman is 166.7.
More newsworthy, perhaps, is that they’ve added a significant amount of weight, which isn’t in keeping with the extra cm. Men are now 9.4 kilos heavier, and women 9.1 kilos: at 86.4 and 71.4 kilos respectively.
Better nutrition
Anne Illemann Christensen, head of research at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, attributed the increase in altitude to better nutrition.
“This applies to the fetus in the mother’s womb, but also through growth. We have been measuring for over 30 years, but if you look even further back, the height has increased over many years, and the nutritional conditions have generally improved,” she says to TV2.
“Nutrition must also be seen in the context of us getting enough food. Many years ago there were some who starved, but eventually everyone got full and got enough food, and then the composition of the food got better and better.”
Lack of exercise
Christensen blames the weight gain on cheap and unhealthy food, too little exercise and too much sedentary work.
“The weight has not increased proportionally with the development in height – especially among women,” she laments.
“It is more problematic because it means that more and more people have become obese. It increases the risk of a number of lifestyle diseases such as cardiovascular diseases and type 2 diabetes.”
Source: The Nordic Page