How Food Stability Shaped the Rising Height of American Generations

Most people understand the role genetics plays in determining one’s height, yet many fail to recognize just how influential environmental factors can also be in shaping our bodies and minds.

Food security is a broad concept that goes far beyond providing individuals with enough nutrients for survival. It also encompasses individuals’ ability to play an active role within food systems.

Nutritional Access

Food security involves three main tenets: consistent access to nutritious foods, avoiding hunger and malnutrition, and keeping food insecurity from worsening over time. These dimensions require social and economic conditions that promote healthy eating – such as sufficient income to afford healthy foods, regular employment opportunities with ample childcare benefits available at an affordable cost, health insurance plans that cover medical care and medical services coverage as well as making appropriate diet and exercise decisions.

Food insecurity is the result of multiple interrelated social processes that are both complex and varied, such as those examined in our longitudinal study where participants resided in rural locations where its availability was affected by local economic and environmental considerations. Some rural areas have seen large food retailers consolidate and close stores due to population decline, forcing some families to travel long distances in search of groceries. This forces some families to purchase food through more remote retailers than previously. In some areas, grocery store numbers have declined while dollar stores have expanded rapidly. Furthermore, low-income neighborhoods tend to experience higher prices for fresh produce, meat/fish/dairy/snacks. This impacts accessing healthy options.

Participants of our study reported experiencing food insecurity at various points throughout its five year duration. Overall, those working full-time and having steady employment reported lower levels of food insecurity compared with those without one (see figure below), suggesting that wider economic and social conditions contribute towards stable or improving levels of food insecurity.

Claudia’s experience demonstrates how a household’s ability to achieve food security can be altered by external events that reduce financial flexibility, such as job loss or having children, or by structural conditions – such as lack of guaranteed health-care coverage – that increase its costs.

Claudia was able to avoid food insecurity despite her temporary unemployment by drawing upon her mother’s support system and increasing SNAP benefits during this period of unemployment. Yet Claudia felt morally accountable for what her children ate and the subsequent consequences of her decisions on them.

Socioeconomic Growth

Children are born with certain amounts of human potential; how that potential manifests itself depends on several factors including family and community environments. A longitudinal study of American families conducted by Coleman-Jensen & Smith 2023 discovered that children whose mothers grew up poor were less likely to end up middle class or above. This indicates the power of social structure to have an enormous effect on intergenerational mobility as well as economic outcomes for their offspring.

Other social structures and institutions also influence households’ ability to purchase nutritious food: For instance, research has demonstrated that rural residents tend to experience greater food security than their urban counterparts (Bowen, Elliott & Hardison-Moody 2021); yet many factors associated with rural residents’ increased food insecurity–low population density or distance from grocery stores being two examples–make it harder for rural dwellers to access healthy products.

Rural participants’ experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the relationships between place and food in our study. Early on in April 2020 when it first entered its initial phase, food insecurity among our participants ranged from 20% to just under 10%; two groups, classified as initial shock 1 and 2, experienced higher risks of food insecurity for most of its duration; these families may have been more prone to experiencing severe economic shocks like job loss or supply disruption, making resolving their hunger issues harder to achieve.

As the pandemic progressed, our rural participants’ food security improved overall. This shift was driven primarily by income growth; more rapid income gains occurred for families in the top quintile than lower quintiles – specifically families in the top 1% saw annual average income increases of more than 5% while those in the bottom 50% only experienced modest increases.

Additionally, SNAP and other safety net programs provided food security to some participants whose work or housing insecurity was most severely disrupted by the pandemic. Clarissa was a single mother with limited savings and numerous health issues who was able to tap SNAP benefits for her family’s sustenance despite previously criticizing those relying on government assistance, realizing now how necessary such support had become in order for Clarissa and her grandchildren’s survival.

Genetic Potential

Genes also play a key role in height. Researchers have identified numerous genetic variants which increase or decrease an individual’s chances of being tall or short, according to research conducted by the GIANT consortium. Single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs account for 40-50% of the variation seen among people of European ancestry while 10-20% can be seen among non-Europeans.

Research team conducted an in-depth DNA analysis on over one million adults and identified 12,111 SNPs associated with height. After categorizing them into genetic “clusters”, they ran a statistical test to see how well each explained height variance; clusters aligned well with specific geographic regions on the genome as well as being near genes known to affect height such as knee and wrist bones.

SNP clusters were also found near locations known to respond to environmental stress, suggesting that environmental influences have had an influence over height by selecting for specific genetic variants among certain groups of individuals.

In their mathematical model, the authors examined how population genetic potential fluctuated over time due to variable environments. Their observations revealed that when environments varied considerably more, populations took longer to equilibrate than they would under constant conditions – giving more time for evolution of their genetic potential, or measure of mutation sensitivity that can be estimated using probability calculations for adaptive evolution processes.

Families living in low-income areas face a higher risk of food insecurity, often resulting in children going hungry or having to skip meals altogether. Rural communities and minority neighborhoods also often lack access to grocery stores or healthy foods. Furthermore, food insecurity is common due to job search issues or limited income sources for some families living there.

Periods of Abundance and Scarcity

Food security refers to having access to enough nutritious foods on an ongoing basis. This means sourcing their required nutrients from both local and global sources, with access being both readily available and affordable. Food security can be complicated due to various influences; adverse weather conditions, political unrest or economic considerations like unemployment can impact one’s ability to acquire and consume their required nutrition.

Food security refers to our ability to properly manage our resources and avoid hunger and malnutrition on an everyday basis, whether this involves managing household finances to purchase adequate quantities of food, adapting diets so as to maximize available foods or finding ways to address nutritional gaps – in short those with secure food availability can withstand short-term shocks or challenges without falling into cycles of hunger and malnutrition.

It has changed how we perceive hunger. This idea has become central to conceptualizations of food security and what is required to achieve and reduce it in countries, becoming widely accepted that food security comprises four pillars – availability, accessibility, utilization and stability which field assessors often refer to when conducting food security assessments.

Food price volatility, measured through a country’s Food Price Index (FPI), is one of the primary measures of food security. Unfortunately, this measure only provides data regarding international prices; domestic markets or other food prices remain unavailable to it. Furthermore, its focus on international markets makes it subject to biases and limitations such as measurement error that prevent it from reflecting how price changes impact individual families purchasing power.

One increasingly popular indicator that addresses some of these limitations is the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) or Food Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES). These instruments involve asking respondents about experiences and perceptions associated with food insecurity; their purpose being to identify household-level dynamics relating to diet outcomes. They’re sensitive to both short- and long-term fluctuations in food prices, giving researchers insight into changes to household food availability and stability over time.