Being shorter or taller depends on details of the diet. Vegetarians can obtain a balanced diet, with sufficient complete protein, vitamins, minerals and micro-nutrients. It's trickier for vegans but it can be done.

Being shorter or taller depends on details of the diet. Vegetarians can obtain a balanced diet, with sufficient complete protein, vitamins, minerals and micro-nutrients. It's trickier for vegans but it can be done.

I agree that zinc is one of the important micro-nutrients but people require a balanced blend of food for our biological engines.

Genes are very important at the individual level but these differences tend to cancel at the national level.

Africans are not as tall as northern Europeans. But Manute Vol and other sports figures in basketball and football receive a lot of press coverage.

The English were relatively short in the mid-nineteenth century and so their expeditions return with stories some exaggerated, not doubt about "giants" who lived in other parts of the world.

There are some effects of the biome. Compact bodies tend to conserve heat relative to linear ones. This can affect average height as well as body proportions. The study participants Europeans and Americans do not fall into the range where this effect is powerful, however.