Authors: Hiroshi Mori
As food consumption increased in quality and quantity after WWII, children in Japan and South Korea grew in height at unprecedented speed, with South Korea some two decades behind Japan due to the Korean War (1950-53). Children in the younger ages ceased to grow taller in Japan shortly before the economy plunged into stagnation in the early-1990s. Children in South Korea kept increasing in height to catch-up with Japanese peers in the mid-1990s and overtook them by 3-5 cm in height in the mid-2000s and then plateaued in the expanding economy toward the end of the 2010s. Have Japanese and Koreans depleted respective gene potentials in height? Children in Japan started to turn away from fruit in the late-1970s and ate far less than one-tenth the volume eaten by older adults in their 50s-60s in 2010. Children in South Korea started to steer away from vegetables in the early-1990s and ate less than one-tenth the volume eaten by older adults in their 50s-60s in the end of the 2010s. Unhealthy diets, with so little fruit/vegetables, likely caused plateauing of children’s height in both Japan and South Korea. It is premature to assume that genetic potential for adult height has been reached.
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