>The Guardian story says: "European countries now scoop the top 10 positions for height, with Dutch men and Latvian women the tallest for their sex. That, says Bentham (1), could be down to the introduction of a welfare state in many European countries."

That fails to consider the obvious explanation - you are comparing small EU countries with low ethnic diversity, uniform lifestyle and high standard of living with stringent immigration to a huge ethnically diverse country with a huge immigration flow.