A poor diet for school-aged children may play a part in the average 20 centimetre height gap between the tallest and shortest nations, with those living in European countries coming out on top, according to a new study.
The Imperial College London-led study, published in medical journal The Lancet , looked at the height, weight and BMI of 65 million participants aged between five to 19 in 200 countries and territories between 1985 and 2019, the BBC reports.
The analysis, from a pool of 2181 population-based studies, found that last year, the tallest 19-year-old men lived in the Netherlands, where they had an average height of 183.8 centimetres. The shortest were in Timor Leste, where they had an average height of 160.1cm.
It also found that, on average, the tallest teenagers lived in north-western and central Europe, while the shortest lived in South and South-East Asia, Latin America and East Africa.
For women, the tallest 19-year-olds lived in the Netherlands, where they had an average height of 170.4cm, while the shortest lived in Gautemala, where they had an average height of 150.9cm.
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