Could my family's vegan diet be making us shorter?!

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tbh, you guys should start your own basketball team

Where do you get 6'7" from? You are taller than BOTH your parents. Your sister's growth spurt would have been connected to her age, not her diet. The only reason you would not be growing as much as you should is if you are malnourished or suffering from a disorder. But at 6'3" you are within the expected range given the heritage you describe. If you were 5'3" then there'd be grounds for concern.

vegan biologist

Your height will be dictated by genetics. But genetics are tricky. Traits can skip a generation or two. We've all seen a blond headed couple with one brunette in the family. Or two tall parents with a short child. People grow at different rates. Some people reach their mature heights at 15, some not until they're in their 20s.

BUT no matter the genetics, you need to get the proper nutrition to express those genetics. So, yes, your diet could be affecting your height.

Your tall enuf lol! Be glad that your not 6'7 ! alot of girls think that's too tall ! u know why meat eaters are bigger sometimes ? Its becuz most meat has growth hormones in it . animals on factory farms they make them grow unnaturally large

Most of my guys friends didn't start to mature and grow bigger until they were in their early 20's keep hanging on!

Apparently not.

i think you should start to have dairy products

maybe is the lack of proteins

There are factors other than genetics that effect height (nutrition, environment, etc.). My parents are 5'3" (mom) and 5'5" (dad), and have always been omni, while as an adult female, I'm 5'8" (and about 3/4"), and I've been veg'n since I was 15. My little sister (also an adult and omni) is about 5'6". Both of my grandmothers were/are very short, and my grandfathers were around 6'. My half brother is over 6 feet, while my half sister is only 5'1" (don't know how tall their dad was). My parents had 6 and 8 siblings. Some are pretty short (especially some of the men are shorter than average), some are average, while a few of the men are around 6 feet. So by your logic, that doesn't make sense at all. Your sister probably just had her last big growth spurt coincidentally around the same time she quit veganism. At any rate, at 17, you're just about fully grown, so changing your diet now is not going to have any effect on your height. You're probably either just naturally built smaller, or you may not have had quite a well balanced diet when you were growing up.

My brother didn't stop growing until he was about 23 (he's vegan), so don't sweat it, you've got plenty of time.

My opinion, based on tons of reading, is that animal products (due to hormones etc.) cause a person to grow faster/earlier when they are younger but don't necessarily guarantee a taller ultimate height. Vegans may also grow for longer being free of the strains of rapid growth in early life. Slow and steady :) Consider the fact that your sister should have been 6' or more based on your argument of genetic stock.

Note: OMG! LOL, some anti-vegan club must have visited this question cause all the answers are hidden due to a low rating! lol

Unless your family is malnourished, your sister's growth spurt is just that: a natural growth spurt. Protein, calcium and all the other nutrients you associate with growth are absolutely found in vegan foods. There are vegans I've known who are over 6 feet tall.

If your family eats properly, what is probably happening is a genetic probability thing called "Regression Toward The Mean." There is a national average for height, and the further you are away from that average (very tall or very short), the more likely your children and grandchildren are to be closer to that average. For example, if I was only 4 feet tall I can expect a good chance that my children will be taller than me. Not by a huge amount, but taller than 4 feet. In your case, you have very tall people in your family, and because of Regression Toward The Mean (mean means "average" by the way) you would be expected to be shorter than your grandparents.

A great example is my grandmother and grandfather. Grandma was very short, about 5 feet tall, and grandpa was much taller, about 6'3. They had 15 kids. Only one child, a male, was grandma's height while the rest of them were all a little taller than the national average...except two, that were tall like grandpa. Out of their children (my generation), there are dozens of us...I have so many cousins it's ridiculous. Only two of aaaallll my cousins and siblings are tall. One it 6'3, the other is 6' and the rest are SHORTER than our parents. Why? Because our parents were taller than the average, and knowing about Regression Towards The Mean it only makes sense that the rest of us are closer to the average.

In other words, my family has gotten shorter and I'm the only vegan (and I became vegan after I stopped growing), so unless you're malnourished it's probability, not diet, causing this.

http://dailyveganeats.tumblr.com (food blog with recipes)
http://twitter.com/dailyveganeats (by-the-meal tweets)

"My sister stopped being vegan when she was 15 and she shot up from 5'5" to 5'11"."
That's 99.99% most likely because that's when most girls hit their growth spurts. All of my friends had growth spurts at either 14 or 15, vegetarian or not (don't know any vegans).

If your grandad is 6'4 and your dad is 6'2, then you're right in between them and its a pretty normal height for your genetics.

You also say your family has been 'historically vegan', and then say you come from such tall stock If most of your family has been vegan and they're so tall, how could a vegan diet be stunting your growth?

vegan
I went from 5'1.5 to almost 5'6 in a little over 1 year, the whole time during which I was vegan
(I'm a girl, and that's the height you would expect from my family)