Something that I recently been hearing a lot in the media is the harmful effects of people in the USA and other western or Westernized nations eating too much processed, non-organic food which is making them fatter, obese, and less healthy.

Since my focus is looking at how human behavior or lifestyles affect them in terms of their growth in their natural growing years and their overall final height, I wanted to ask the question “Does eating an organic food diet lead to a taller height?”

It should make some logical sense to say that the organic foods that so many people these days talk about should be healthier than the foods that is more processed, and the foods that have chemicals injected in them. Since the food is supposed to be healthier, then shouldn’t it make the person eating it healthier, and that results in better growth rates leading to taller final heights?

From what I have seen at my local Whole Foods store, I would say that it might not be the case. What I have personal noted in terms of just observation and weak anecdotal evidence is that fact that organic foods usually come in smaller sizes and portions than the kind of food found from non-organic sources.

It would seem that the real argument for choosing organic is that they have less pesticide and more nutrients in them. Interestingly, many posts in recent years like from the Huffington Post suggest that the old argument of organic food being healthier, safer, and more nutricious may not be true from studies done by researchers at Stanford. Even NPR have articles that say the same message, that the idea that organic food is healthier and safer may not be true.

The research I have done suggest that everytime a young kid who is still growing suffers some type of illness or infection or inflammation causes the longitudinal increase in the long bones which is responsible for growth to be stunted, even if it is a fraction of a millimeter. While many people have multiple other reasons for why it might be a better idea to go with the organic foods option, I am viewing it from the growth rate point of view.

What might be more important to ask is two basic factors…

• Whether the nutrients inside the organic compared to the non-organic are higher in the involved of chondrocyte differentiation, proliferation, and hypertrophy.

• Whether the organic foods compare to the non-organic foods are more likely to cause the person eating it to develop more illnesses and infections. 

These are what will affect the person’s growth and height.

What I would say is that since organic fruits and vegetables which are grown without exotic chemicals they come out to be smaller so that people who buy the organic foods at higher prices are consuming less foods than people eating the non-organic type.

Since the quantity is larger, in terms of overall nutrient concentration in the vegetables and fruits, the non-organic foods probably makes people become overweight more than the former. There have been multiple studies which show that children who become overweight early in life develop into puberty earlier than their peers and that means faster bone maturity. This results in decreased final height. So does this train of thought mean that the organic food selection will make kids taller since they are becoming less likely to become overweight?

Maybe not since we are not looking adding the overall nutrients amount factor in. There might be more nutrients in organic foods but the food of the non-organic compensates for its low nutrient concentration by being larger so it is likely that the overall nutrients amount of greater than the organic foods.

If we are to view growth rates as a positive correlation function to how much nutrients they can get into their bodies, then it might suggest that non-organic foods are better for higher growth rates.

In the articles I have looked at, most of the nutrition researchers show that the quality of the organic food is actually about the same as non-organic foods so the result is more likely that there will be very little height difference between the people who eat organic and those who eat non-organic.

If I was asked which side is more likely to lead to even a slight increased height advantage, I would say that it is more likely that the people who eat non-organic foods are the ones who will end up taller than the people who eat organic. The best example are the animal meats like beef which get injected with Growth Hormones which make the meat thicker and bigger. When the human ingests the meat, they also consume the growth hormone, which might accelerate the growth process a slight amount.

In general, throughout most of human history, obesity was not a big problem. Growth stunting occurred more from not enough food than too much food. It is actually in terms of large generalization not likely that a slightly overweight person would also be below average in height, although there are quite a few people who fit both descriptions. Overweight people are usually big eaters when they were younger, and the overeating meant they did get high levels of some type of nutrients. Even though they may be overweight, their growth would not be stunted from not getting enough to eat, like so many other people in human history.

The thing to take away from this post is to understand that more than one’s choice on whether they are eating organic or non-organic, it is more likely that one’s genetic makeup will determine much more on how high their growth rate will be.