Somebody at Metafilter asked themselves this question, and then set out to find the answers. Why are the Dutch so tall?

The New Yorker had a long exploratory article in 2004 in which economist John Komlos argued that health and well-being may have something to do with it. And last November, Al Jazeera looked into the consequences of being the tallest people on Earth: these days, Dutch building codes prescribe door heights of at least 2.30 metres, instead of the skimpy 2.10 metres that used to be the norm.

The average Dutch man is 1.81 metres tall, by the way, and the average Dutch woman 1.67 metres, and those numbers are still increasing. How much is that in feet?

(Photo by Metro Centric, some rights reserved)