Your grandma is probably pretty short.
In fact, grandmas all over the world are pretty short.
As they’ve aged, their cartilage has shrunk, their bones have worn down, and their muscles
have deteriorated; as a result, your grandma has been losing about half an inch of height
each decade since she turned 40.
But even before she started shrinking, your grandma was probably never as tall as she
might have been.
And that's because many grandmas were malnourished as babies, which inhibited their ability to
reach full height later on.
There were lots of reasons for this – historically, many people were chronically short on food,
or lived through famines.
Babies also used to get a lot sicker a lot more often, with illnesses that compromise
the body’s ability to absorb nutrients.
Plus, we simply didn’t know a whole lot about infant nutrition.
As a result, malnutrition robbed your grandma of somewhere between 2 and 3.5 inches of her
potential height.
OK, maybe not your grandma, but grandmas on average around the world.
The good news is that, thanks to increasing wealth, better vaccines, improved sanitation,
and more nutritional know-how, people of all genders and nationalities have gotten taller
over the past hundred years.
And in some countries, the gains have been huge – men and women in South Korea, for
example, are 6 and 8 inches taller, respectively, than they were a century ago.
That’s about the height difference between Ever, our illustrator, and me!
And it’s not just about height – well-nourished kids with normal growth have fewer health
problems and an easier time learning, AND go on to make more money than people whose
growth is stunted from malnutrition.
What’s more, the populations of most developing countries are still gaining height today;
in fact, there are only a few places where the population has stopped getting taller
in the last few decades: very wealthy countries like the US and Denmark, where almost all
people have enough food to reach their maximum potential height, and very poor countries
like Niger, India, and Papua New Guinea, where people still face major challenges with food
insecurity, disease, and sanitation.
In those places, we're still coming up short.
There is still a lot of progress to be made, which is why the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
partnered with us to make this video.
This year Bill and Melinda Gates created the Goalkeepers report to track the progress of
the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals and inspire a new generation of goalkeepers
to hold their leaders accountable and drive action to accelerate progress.
One of those goals is to end stunted growth due to malnutrition by 2030 through a range
of programs designed to address health and nutrition broadly.
But progress is not inevitable and there is still more to be done.
Check out the report by clicking the link in the description box below and learn how
you can become a goalkeeper.