Modern Farmer – Dan Nosowitz
“It’s likely that at least one person told you as a kid that milk would help you grow tall. The claim is pretty persistent; parents love it, dairy farmers repeat it, and it shows up unsubtly in “Got Milk?” ads (like this one, featuring 6’11” NBA player Chris Bosh standing next to a giraffe). As to where the claim comes from, nobody’s exactly sure. “Partly, it’s a kind of intuitive understanding, meaning that when infants of any species of mammal drink milk, it’s also a period of very rapid growth,” says Andrea Wiley, an anthropologist who has been studying the question of milk and height for more than a decade.”(more)