The Colonists Were Bigger Than the Redcoats — and Food Was One Reason
When I look at the men who lined up against the redcoats, I think the familiar picture needs adjusting.
They were ragged in places. They were short on powder. They were not always trained like the British regulars. But man for man, many of the American-born colonists were physically bigger than the European world they came from.
And one major reason was food.
By the late 1700s, height records show that American-born men had a real advantage over many Europeans. Historian John Komlos found that Americans were “as much as 6.6 cm taller than Englishmen,” and he pointed to the “immense nutritional advantages of the New World.” That is not folklore. That is what shows up in the bones, in enlistment records, and in the bodies of men raised on a different continent.
The American colonist had grown up with access to meat, game, milk, butter, cheese, fish, eggs, and open land in quantities the European poor could often only ...

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