Childhood nutrition is a significant factor in adult size - and I'm not talking about people being overweight. In the early part of the last century, childhood nutrition was comparatively poor for many people, and the average body size of British soldiers, for example, was smaller than it is today.

The bulkiness of modern American and British soldiers is unusal, historically-speaking. I don't mean fat - just muscle-bulky. If you watch movies of WWI or WWII, soldiers look almost universally scrawny by comparison. And, actually, it's quite striking how much bulkier American and British soliders are in comparison to Iraqi soliders, policemen, and citizens.

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