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....... How about some of the kids in inner cities that end up playing basketball, professional or college?.........
Inner city kids go to inner city schools where there is always milk in the free school lunch they are all given.
Apparently, some of the schools have to sweeten the milk to get the kids to drink it, but the kids are getting milk at least 5 days a week and some schools are giving the free lunch on weekends and during summer vacation.
Of course, genes determine height potential, but it still takes adequate nutrition to reach genetic potential for growth. Tall genes do not make a starved child with malnutrition into a tall adult.
My mother is a teacher and she was teaching at a low income school. Theory was that the children did not do well because they were hungry, so a free breakfast program was initiated.
Test scores shot up. Success!!
Not really, the final analysis showed that test scores went up because the students' attendance went up. When they got a free breakfast, more kids came to school in the morning so they were present in school more days and they got more education time.
The kids who were there anyway, whether they were hungry or not, had no effect on their test scores due to the free breakfast.
Unfortunately, the program was discontinued. So what if it didn't work the way they thought it would work. It did work and education level went up. But it didn't prove someone's pet theory, so they lost interest in the program.
Nowadays, I think that it is pretty common to have a free breakfast in low income schools. At least a breakfast of sorts, even if it is just a granola bar. I don't know if kids will go to school if the only incentive is a granola bar, so I don't know if that is helping education levels.
I think its nutrition in general. I mean, I'm 6'3 and I drank tons of milk growing up. Mom would go through 7-10 gallons/week with the three of us (3 boys born within 5 years.)
My middle brother is 5'10 on a good day. He drank as much or more milk as I did.
My youngest brother is 6'2 and wasn't much of a milk drinker.
My dad and uncles all had at least an inch on my Grandfather, usually two or three inches, but then again, Grandma was 5'9, tall for a woman born in the twenties. So I think Genetics is a huge component.
That said, I went to college with some second generation H'mong. While they weren't going to compete in the NBA, they towered over their parents that were born and raised in Asia, in what I can only assume was a food insecure environment during a time of civil war.
Good, bad, or ugly, Fat or thin, you cannot deny that nutrition has gotten so much better in this country over the last 70 years. Has it brought its own set of problems? Of course.
I can't locate the source, but I remember reading somewhere that in the British Army during WW1, Officers were several inches taller than enlisted men. In Britain (and probably true in the US to an extent), officers were far more likely to come from wealthier, more privileged backgrounds, with better food.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
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I hate milk (except ice cold in cereal) and always have. I didn't drink milk at all when growing up. I'm 4' 11".
I'm not agreeing (or disagreeing) with the science; I'm just stating my facts. I'd be upset to learn that milk could have made me be at least 5' 2". (Okay, okay, 5' 1".) I would have drank that nasty crap if that was the case.
I probably drank 6 glasses of milk a day as a kid -all the way through college. Still only got to be 5'1" so no to" does milk make you taller?". It is all in genetics and which genes you got from your parents.
People need to be clear that the theory is not that "Milk makes people grow tall." You're not going to outgrow your genetic potential no matter what. The theory is that milk "may" make people grow taller than they would have been otherwise.
It seems well proven that entire ethnic groups had the genetic potential to grow taller than they traditionally did, and this became evident when they began eating a diet rich in protein, calcium, and possibly other nutrients that were lacking. Dairy products apparently helped supply those nutrients.
Good lord people. Do some research rather than just agreeing with milk commercials the dairy industry puts out. You don't even absorb much of the calcium from cows milk! It's NOT a good source for that. It is a reason children start puberty so much earlier now though.
Location: Montreal -> CT -> MA -> Montreal -> Ottawa
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DawnMTL
I hate milk (except ice cold in cereal) and always have. I didn't drink milk at all when growing up. I'm 4' 11".
I'm not agreeing (or disagreeing) with the science; I'm just stating my facts. I'd be upset to learn that milk could have made me be at least 5' 2". (Okay, okay, 5' 1".) I would have drank that nasty crap if that was the case.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Rabflmom
I probably drank 6 glasses of milk a day as a kid -all the way through college. Still only got to be 5'1" so no to" does milk make you taller?". It is all in genetics and which genes you got from your parents.
We're a family of shorties, so I was doomed from the start.
It is a reason children start puberty so much earlier now though.
That is a popular theory, but it's not proven or even supported by research. Actual scientific studies don't link early puberty to milk.
This is from The Guardian:
Quote:
Research constantly flags up the link between BMI (Body Mass Index, used to indicate if an individual is overweight or obese) and puberty. But there is more to it than that.
For example, one study found that children who had been adopted recently from a developing county to Denmark were 10 to 20 times more likely to develop precocious puberty than children in the developed country. The study also found that the difference could not be explained entirely by changes in nutrition, body weight, or body fat. Similar findings were found in studies of children immigrating to Sweden, France, Belgium, Switzerland and the United States.
Other factors that can influence biology relate to a child's environment - stress, climate, light cycles and chemical exposures all have established links, though their magnitude is still not entirely understood.
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