[TexanToTheCore]

height is genreally related to two major factors:

1. High protein intake. It is possible that at the time, hunting was still used to obtain food and this would generally result in a larger individual.

2. Lack of chronic disease is the most important factor. IT appears that the people of that age were fairly healthy. This was probably due to a lack of large population centers that would be the centers of disease.

Men in the the 1790s were as tall as those of WWII, according to Army records. Between those times we got smaller as our cities developed due to the influx of immigrants.

A Good discussion of this is in the "The Fourth Great Awakening".

[Garuda82]

Are you sure about that? I thought reaching your potential (considering only the nutrition side) was all about getting enough calcium.

Of course, protein, vitamins, and all the rest are key, but I always thought calcium was the #1.

[Wallace T.]

A good case could be made for the effects of diet. Studies done in the 1920s noted that the American-born children of Italian and Eastern European immigrants were taller than their foreign-born parents. Indeed, their average height started to approach that of Americans of Northern European background. While these second generation Americans would have eaten their mothers' cooking while growing up, the greater prosperity in America meant that there would be more meat in the meals than was the case in Calabria, Belarus, or Croatia. In other word, more meatballs and less spaghetti, or more kielbasa and less sauerkraut.

[happygrl]

Lack of chronic disease is the most important factor.

As a person from a ranching state, you would also have support for this from the fact that antibiotics are used to improve cattle health, with the result that they grow larger.