The Dutch, the world's tallest, get that shrinking feeling

AALSMEER (Netherlands) • While the rest of the world literally looks up to the Dutch, the tallest members of the loftiest populace on the planet insist it is not easy being big.

So an official study by the Dutch national statistics office finding that they appear to be shrinking could be seen as good news.

At a meeting of the Klub Lange Mensen, or Tall People's Club, the lowlanders say there are drawbacks to towering over most of the rest of humanity.

"I've always struggled with my height. When I was 12, I was already the tallest in class, also taller than my teachers," says club chairman Helen Keuken, 57, who stands at 1.9m. "And when I came into contact with the club, it was a revelation. I felt like an outsider and now I belong somewhere."

In a bar in the town of Aalsmeer near Schiphol airport, members of the club dance and chat over a drink, glad to have a place to gather where they do not stand out. Even by Dutch standards, they are tall, with men needing to be at least 1.9m and women at least 1.8m.

"We can have a conversation at eye level. You don't have to bend, you can look straight," says club secretary Rob Leurs-Kout, who stands at an imposing 2.11m.

Many members say that being tall has become "less exceptional" than when they were younger, notwithstanding the study by the statistics office CBS.

For those born in 2001, the men stand at 1.829m on average, a centimetre shorter than the generation born in 1980, the CBS says, while the women are 1.693m, 1.4cm shorter.

Even so, the Dutch remain the world's tallest; they still surpass on average the men of Montenegro, Estonia and Bosnia and the women of Montenegro, Denmark and Iceland, says the CBS.

At the start of the 19th century the Dutch were small by European standards and started to shoot up only in the 1840s, before finally becoming the tallest with the generation born in the 1950s.

The reasons are "very difficult to pinpoint", says assistant professor Gert Stulp of the University of Groningen's faculty of behavioural and social sciences.

"We know if a country gets wealthier - with better healthcare, better nutrition and fewer diseases - that increases height, as it has done for the Netherlands," says Prof Stulp, who is 2m.

"Our diets are believed to be one cause, the Dutch drink a lot of milk," he says. However, he is "not convinced" by a widely quoted theory that natural selection is responsible - with taller Dutch people having more children than shorter ones and their children repeating the pattern.

And how did the shrinkage come about?

Migrants is one main cause, with people from non-Western backgrounds generally being shorter, both CBS and Prof Stulp suggest. Growth has also "stagnated" among people with both parents born in the Netherlands, and those with grandparents born in the country.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE