Are vegans really short?

Perhaps my family may be a good example against the idea that vegans are shorter.

My son became a vegetarian, eating a little cheese, rarely drinking milk.

His wife comes from a long line of vegetarians who rarely consume dairy (hence I cannot call them vegans), and both are tall.

Now my grandson, who has never tasted meat and is rarely given dairy is very tall for his age.

As for the health issues, vegetarians/vegans life spans would definitely be longer due to the decreased risk of heart disease and cancer.

Sad how some people become so arrogant and rude when they face a question which doesn't suit their life choices.

I hope I have been of some help, there are many arguments put forward here.

Hope you have a Happy Birthday!

It would be helpful if you'd post a link, considering that all my sources have said vegan children achieve the same average height as omnivore children. Provided that a child is not severely malnourished, height is based on genetics. "SOME vegan children tend to grow a little more slowly after weaning, but catch up around 10 years of age." -Becoming Vegan by Brenda Davis and Vesanto Melina "Appropriately planned vegan and lacto-ovo-vegetarian diets satisfy the nutrient needs of infants, children and adolescents and promote NORMAL growth." -Position of the American Dietetic Association: Vegetarian Diets

This has very little to do with diet. It is man's continuing evolution along with scientific increases in technology. Most babies are bottle fed,which is normally much higher in vitamins,and minerals that a baby needs. Your growth potential is limited somewhat to genetics, however,just as our bones have thinned and lengthened since modern man started exploring North America, so too have other changes occurred. There are 100 times the drugs now then there was just 10 years ago, So even vegans are taller than our meat eating ancestors.

I hardly ate any meat growing up and I've been vegan for awhile now but I'm still 5'7, even though my parents are both short. I think it's just an evolutionary thing...people have been getting taller for a long time now...look at houses that were built in the 1700s, the ceilings are so low.

Your question seems to be a bit western hemisphere oriented.

Well to be frank........red meat consumption is not that much in Asia as compared to the west.

Hormone treatment given to animals is negligient in South Asia.

But a major mistake in your understanding is that hormones consumed by animals affects a human! .......now thats wrong.

There's no relation at all between the two facts

From Wikipedia-

"East Asian people, who appear to be stereotypically shorter, have been incrementally increasing in height with each new generation through dietary improvements, as seen in nations such as South Korea and some parts of the People's Republic of China"

The "word dietary improvements" is the key here.

Increase in calcium and a balanced vitamin intake which lacks in traditional east Asian diet is the genetic cause for smaller statures of east Asians.

From additional details:

"I am also talking about trends and averages, and I do not claim that one cannot naturally be taller than their parents.

I know people were generally shorter hundreds of years ago, but not THAT much. It wasn't like that every next generation was an inch taller in average."

Remember the human ancestors?....Australopithecines, Cro-Magnon man, etc.....they were infact taller than we are today.

One cannot comment vaguely on the stature of a generation of Humans just on the basis of food!

Abnormal height changes occur only due to MUTATIONS, which can be forced (caused by the organism itself which proves beneficial for the next generation) OR environmental.

200 years ago problems like cancer, heart diseases, strokes, cholesterol problems existed...I'm sure of that if if you take the chronology back to 500 years.

The problem in this argument is DATA evaluation.

Detailed data don't exist. One cant state anything in the abscence of Data!

Another thing needs to benoted is the world population that is approx 6.5 billion now....compared to a million in 1800 hundred!

So naturally the cases of disease reported too would be collosal considering the percentage affecting has remained more or less same over the years.

Infact stress, emotional disturbances and environmental changes have resulted in the recent spurt of cancer, heart diseases, strokes, cholesterol problems etc

I hope my answer helps in some way :)

Well its quite loooooooong!!

♪♫ Happy birthday ♪♫ in advance.

More than 10, 000 years ago, before agriculture, there were no incidents of degnerative diseases (cancer, parkinson's, macular, etc). There was an expedition in 1812 or so that noted this among natives in African tribes, but no one paid much attention.

Here's what people ate in the caveman days: fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs, meat. Some native tribes still eat these things.

Here's what they did not eat (modern fare) grains, dairy, refined sugar.,beans and legumes, squashes, artificial anything.

Modern diets cause diseases. That is the main reason people are sick these days. Of course, processed and artificial foods don't help either! That has made the situation 10X worse....

You know what? I think there aren't yet enough people around who are vegan since birth (or were vegan in childhood), to make this comparison. We'll just have to wait another 20 or 30 years to be able to say for sure (whether vegans are shorter than meat-eater or not).

But whatever hormones and additives they are putting in farm animals' food, it is totally unnatural and wrong.

This is addressed in many health articles, sites, etc... The trend has to do with healthier diets now (on average) then in the past as well as advances in medicine. It's the same reason that the average life span is longer and menses starts sooner.

Well it could also be other things as well.

Remember that during the time that the Spanish came to America, people were about 5 foot tall on average.

Ponce DeLeon was something like 4'10".

Vegans are as short as .......... never mind. Someone twice your age, the tallest in the family and never liked or eaten a lot of meat, wouldn't think this proves anything. If you think the opposite to the affirmative case to your question why are you putting the case for? You are in bed with mainstream nutritionists, at least, who are doing such a "wonderful" job of keeping us healthy with their advice.

So what hormones did you have for your breakfast?. Are you an XX female? Gender can make a difference when it comes to the hormone business. Going to Britain to eat some meat in the last 28 years could have made a person's brain turn to sponge (Creuztfeldt-Jakob disease). This was organized by feeding the cattle highly nutritious sheep droppings which is purely logical if you want people's heads to be bigger so they are taller just like thinking it would have been easier to nail and tie people to wooden crosses if they are one inch tall. And of course the intestinal workings in elephants and humans are identical - after all they are mammals aren't they?

Finally you flip to the other side and wonder about the price paid for all this hormone meat munching.

Vegans may be better off short than short changed with some of the meat offerings.