Bigger people: a growing problem.(Social Science and the Citizen)

The earth supports a wide variety of life forms ranging in size from microscopic bacteria to 100-ton whales. Most of us appreciate this diversity in nature as well as in ourselves. The Japanese love their Sumo wrestlers and Americans love their football and basketball players. And most people view the increase in height and weight of the average person in developed countries as a good thing. However, Thomas T. Samaras, writing in the Earth Island Journal, finds the trend towards larger body size over the last 150 years dangerous for the individual, society, and the earth and violates nature's attempts to reduce our body size. With the exception of the last 150 years, humans have been steadily decreasing in body …