The Changing Body: Health, Nutrition, and Human Development in the Western World since 1700 (New Approaches to Economic and Social History) Paperback – April 29, 2011

Fascinating subject demonstrated through statistical analysis of historical documents, not just on various anecdotal accounts. Dry as dust to read, but fascinating once I let my mind focus.

A wonderfully challenging view of what makes for a standard of living in any society. It's not the number of cars you own, but the nutritional status of its citizens which makes for a productive, intellectually vital society.

Contrary to another review, this book doesn't have anything to say about who is more productive. What it does, with extensive detail, is trace a 300 year evolution of progress with high living standards leading to better nutrition, leading to healthier babies which are taller and heavier, having taller and heavier babies, in turn. For those who think the obesity is a recent phenomenon, this book indicates it is a long standing trend, one which has skyrocketed int the last 50 years. But it obviously started well before computer games, sugar-sweetened beverages, vending machines and other current villans. So, it brings into question, What is the goal of current obesity policy? To what stage of history do we want to return? 1950? 1850? Why are we focusing on changing behavior of individuals who are simply a part of a broad evolutionary trend? And what about the economic development of Asia and other developing countries? Is obesity and its related conditions their inevitable price of improved living standards? This is a book full of profound questions which need thoughtful examination.
See my full review at [...]
Morgan Downey

If only Amazon could use its capability to publish scholarly works in a competent way.

As others, too numerous to mention, have pointed out, graphical materials and photos are destroyed and made useless by the slipshod and simply awful way that Amazon portrays them. The content is excellent; the publishing is awful; I removed one star for the publishing mess. For the most part, Amazon publishes text; its tables, graphs, photos and other materials are less than useless. They are mostly marketing come-ons that always disappoint. Not a single graph/chart is properly readable as far as I could discern. For a book like this, Amazon should hang its head in shame.

I wasted $14 on this and am severely disappointed.

The Changing Body provides a wealth of research statistics relating increasing body size to health, productivity, and life expectancy. Based on their research, the authors conclude that taller, bigger people are superior. While there is no doubt that we have much lower infant mortality and a substantially longer average life expectancy at birth, the authors ignored a wealth of information that contradicts their findings. Opposing authors have published over 33 scientific papers on the subject of health and longevity and its relation to body size. These studies found that shorter people live longer and many were outstanding contributors to human society. These included President James Madison, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Buckminster Fuller, Einstein, Alexander the Great, John Keats, Andrew Carnegie, David Murdock, Onassis, Joan of Arc, Premier Deng of China, Picasso, Michelangelo, and many, many others. In addition, women are smaller than men, but they are not less productive than bigger men, except when physical strength is necessary. Geoffrey Cannon discussed the productivity of shorter people in the March 2011 issue of World Nutrition. The Aztecs could carry about a 100 pound load on their backs for many hours. They were about 5'3.

Unfortunately, two books that challenge their "bigger is better" thesis are not discussed (see below). Other important contrary information was omitted. For example, the famous researcher and physician, Denis Burkitt, stated in his book with Temple, Western Diseases (1994), that the developed world has seen an explosive growth in Western diseases during the 20th century. The John Hopkins Medical Letter, Health After 50, also reported in 2010 that about 50% of US adults 65 years and older take 5 or more medications a day and about 25% of adults take 10 to 20 medications per day. Another statistic challenging their belief that we are healthy is that about 70% of the US adult population is now overweight or obese and the world is following us on this path. Burkitt, ARP Walker, Colin Campbell and other researchers have found populations that eat less animal protein, fat and calories tend to be thinner and are often free of many chronic diseases common to developed countries. Professor Barry Popkin noted in his book, The World is Fat (2009), that the food system developed over the last 150 years has been "devastating" to our health.

In addition, Silventoinen (2006) reported that the Western diet has promoted both taller height and coronary heart disease. Bartke (2007) also noted that technologically advanced populations are experiencing an "alarming" rise in health problems. Wells (2008) also noted that the increase in cardiovascular disease has correlated with the secular trend in increased height. Studies of non-developed populations (Burkitt, Temple, Trowell, and World Cancer Research Fund) have found Western chronic diseases are rare as long as the populations follow their traditional plant-based diets. Wang and Weindruch also reported that both smaller body size and caloric restriction in animals promote increased longevity. Preliminary studies of primates and humans on caloric restriction support animal findings.

The authors provide studies showing a correlation between human productivity and increased body size. However, it could be that productivity increased first, then people got more to eat, and then they became more productive. In other words, our ability to grow more food came first, then we got bigger. The Japanese and Chinese have demonstrated great productivity during the last 50 years of industrial development. Yet, most adults during this developmental period were relatively small compared to Europeans and North Americans. The Indians and South Koreans are other examples challenging the "small is less productive" thesis. The Vietcong were also small people but an excellent fighting force according to the Department of Defense. They defeated an army of much bigger soldiers while the average Vietcong consumed relatively little food per day.

I think people should read this book and then read the book by Samaras TT (ed): Human Body Size and the Laws of Scaling, 2007, Nova Biomedical Publishers, NY. Then they can make an objective assessment as to whether small people are less productive and less healthy than taller, bigger people. This is a technical book that provides findings based on 5000 research and scientific papers. A less academic book is The Truth About Your Height (1994), which I believe is easier to read but does not present all the data shown in Human Body Size and the Laws of Scaling. To find a listing of research articles on height, weight, health and longevity, go to: humanbodysize.com Chapters on body size and longevity are also in Epidemiology and Demography in Public Health (2011) and The International Encyclopedia of Public Health (2008) under Samaras TT. Two other books contain chapters on nutrition, growth and height: New Developments in Obesity Research (2006) and Trends in Nutrition Research (2006).

I think The Changing Body by four eminent economists and social scientists makes an important contribution to human knowledge if it stimulates critical thinking and objective evaluation of contradictory findings over the last 36 years.

As having never heard of history told through human measurements, I found this book fascinating. The authors spend most of the book discussing methodological challenges rather than results, but it's truly worth the read.

I'm not going to attempt to summarize the book here, but the authors present very interesting, if not politically incorrect, ideas and corroborate them with data. I had the privilege of meeting with Robert Fogel personally-not a man of stature-and discussing how he was personally surprised by some of these findings. But ultimately, Fogel meekly claims that he's really just a data cruncher; physicians and biologists are the true theoreticians. He's only confirming or negating their ideas with massive amounts of numbers and calculations.

I very much recommend this book - at least the first couple of chapters. It may seem slightly repetitive as it progresses.