Abstract
In his essay, Height and Weight of West Point Cadets: Dietary Change in Antebellum America, John Komlos claimed that, beginning with the birth cohort of the 1820s, the heights of West Point cadets fell and that the trend bottomed out in the [birth cohort of the] 1860s and generally reversed in the 1870s.''1 He believed that this decline reflects a general development in the American population, and that it was due to a reduction in available nutrients per capita. According to Komlos, the nutrient shortfall was in turn due to the inability of American agriculture to meet the demands placed upon it by the pronounced structural changes the economy was undergoing during this period. The case seems to me less secure than Komlos believed it to be. The next section of this note deals with the height data. The third and fourth treat Komlos's measurement and interpretation of food production and consumption, and the fifth is a brief conclusion.
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