British children shorter than other five-year-olds in Europe, study finds

British five-year-olds are up to 7cm shorter than children of the same age in Europe.

Some experts are suggesting nutrition- and especially a lack of quality food - could be stunting the growth of children in the UK.

The average girl is 111.7cm tall and boys are 112cm in Britain (around 3-ft 6-in), according to data collected by NCD Risk Factor Collaboration.

By comparison, in Bulgaria, children are much taller, the research showed. There, boys are, on average, 120cm (almost 4ft) tall and girls are 118cm.

Children in Italy, Spain, France and Sweden are all much taller at age five, on average, than UK youngsters of the same age.The average height in Britain has stayed the same since the mid-1980s, whereas children in other countries, especially in Eastern Europe, have grown taller in the decades since.

How the average height of five-year-old UK boys has changed since 1990, compared to other nations

In 1985, the UK recorded the 69th tallest five-year-olds in the world.

But this has significantly dropped to 96th for girls, and boys' average heights have fallen even further, to 102nd place.

“They’ve fallen by 30 places, which is pretty startling,” said Professor Tim Cole, an expert in child growth rates at the Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health, University College London told The Times newspaper. “The question is why?”

The professor, who was not involved in the most recent study, said wider data on the height of 19-year-olds suggested that growing up in the 2010s “which happens to coincide with the period of austerity . . . tells me that austerity has clobbered the height of children in the UK.”

In 2020, an Imperial College London team behind a study into height of children up to the age of 19 warned nutrition - and especially a lack of quality food - may lead to stunted growth.

They found global height rankings for the UK had worsened over the past 35 years, with 19-year-old boys falling from 28th tallest in 1985 (176.3 cm) to 39th in 2019 (178.2 cm), and 19-year-old girls from 42nd (162.7 cm) to 49th (163.9 cm).

Speaking in 2020, when the study was published, Professor Majid Ezzati, senior author of the study from Imperial’s School of Public Health said: “Children in some countries grow healthily to five years, but fall behind in school years.

"This shows that there is an imbalance between investment in improving nutrition in pre-schoolers, and in school-aged children and adolescents.

"This issue is especially important during the Covid-19 pandemic when schools are closed throughout the world, and many poor families are unable to provide adequate nutrition for their children.”

Dr Andrea Rodriguez Martinez, the lead author of the study from Imperial’s School of Public Health, added:  “Our findings should motivate policies that increase the availability and reduce the cost of nutritious foods, as this will help children grow taller without gaining excessive weight for their height.

"These initiatives include food vouchers towards nutritious foods for low-income families, and free healthy school meal programmes which are particularly under threat during the pandemic.

"These actions would enable children to grow taller without gaining excessive weight, with lifelong benefits for their health and wellbeing.”

Footballer Marcus Rashford had previously highlighted the study in his campaign to urge the British government to extend free school meals to eligible children throughout summer holidays and for older teenagers.

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