[steve_adams_86]

Muscle mass in that equation would be relative to stature, so being smaller wouldn’t be a disadvantage in that regard.

In my comment above I didn’t mean to suggest strength is useless or irrelevant so much as that scaling it up by a few percent doesn’t appear to confer meaningful benefits. Someone 5’6” is probably strong enough to do everything someone 6’ can do in every day life, even without modern technology. You can generally scale down what you need to, and for exceptional things, you can likely recruit and partner to solve the problem or apply intelligent solutions.

I’m open to being wrong. Like I was saying, this is just based on correlations I’ve been reading about lately and far from peer reviewed study results.

[geraldwhen]

No man would choose to be 5’6 in America. Anyone under 6’ knows how difficult it is to date, especially online.

[steve_adams_86]

Of course. I’m speaking from a biological rather than cultural perspective (as much as you can separate the two, at least). I’m more so interested in what supports longevity as opposed to what supports dating prospects.

I suppose my question is, all other things being equal, would we be healthier if we were of smaller stature? Some data indicate this might be the case, and that’s interesting to me. I suppose my upbringing and culture encourage a “bigger is better” mentality.

A lot of data indicate this could simply be a case of people growing larger because they have access to more food. Genes express, people grow, but the main issue isn’t stature so much as having so much food readily available after they finish growing. Perhaps we eat too much and stature has little to do with it; it’s just a byproduct of access to calorie and protein rich food.