Americans Also Shorter Than Everybody Else

Cheer up, Americans! You aren't just overweight illiterate underemployed TV addicts with $25,000 in credit card bills and a house worth less than you owe -- you're also short! The shortest people in the industrialized world, in fact.

Once the nation of tall, healthy people who lived on the frontier and discovered stuff and made houses out of logs and protected the nice Iraqis from Hitler, America is now at the very bottom. For 200 years, from the days of 6'2" George Washington and 8'7" Abraham Lincoln to the days of 10'11" Ronald Reagan, we were the tallest motherfuckers in the world. The tallest people in the industrialized world are now the Dutch . The Dutch, people!

Now the depressing part: We aren't shorter because, say, illegal aliens are short and they're bringing down the averages. We are short because for the past 30 years, we've been eating garbage and raising kids on McDonald's. Also, this nation doesn't have a whaddyacallit, a health care system thing. Height is an indicator of diet and health care and lifespan. Oh yeah, you're going to die earlier, too.

 Growing Problem: Shrinking Americans [ABC News]