It was the strange image that sparked a thousand memes on the Internet earlier this month.
Gary Barlow’s 24-year-old son was seen towering over his father, making the 53-year-old look like a saturated borrower.
The images prompted social media users to search for images of other “giant” celebrity children, including Bear Grylls’ 18-year-old son Mamaduke and Donald Trump’s 18-year-old son Barron Trump, and more recently , Kourtney Kardashian’s eldest son, Mason. 14.
Now, a new study presented at the American Heart Association Conference in Chicago has offered an explanation for the phenomenon.
Experts at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York examined data on 13,000 Americans of Latino and Hispanic descent, including details such as their height, socioeconomic education and genetics.
The findings revealed that of the factors that determine our height, family income was the second strongest predictor, behind genetics.
While 70 to 80 percent of our height depends on the genes we inherit from our parents, the rest is determined by our environment.
Previous studies have found that sleep, stress and access to health care are important factors.
Kourtney, who is five feet tall, went to the store with Mason and her daughter Penelope, 12, on Monday.
But experts found that growing up in a wealthier family can outperform other taxpayers.
The team wrote that this may indicate “better nutrition and social resources to promote growth.”
They also found that this height was also linked to better heart health and cognitive abilities among children.
However, they noted that gains in heart health could be reversed in later adulthood once lifestyle factors, such as obesity from eating too many calories, take their toll.
All celebrity children come from rich homes.
Take That singer Gary Barlow has reportedly amassed a huge fortune of £90million, while Kourtney is worth around £28million.
Professional adventurer Bear Grylls is said to have earned £8.2 million this year alone.
However, they are all dwarfed by Trump, who has a net worth of £5bn, although most of the president’s assets are tied up in the share value of his own companies.
The findings echo an earlier British study that found that children in the poorest areas of England were four times more likely to measure below the average height for their age compared to those in more affluent areas.
A wealth of data also shows that children in richer countries are, on average, taller than those in poorer ones.
Gary Barlow shares Daniel, 25 (left), Emily, 22, and Daisy, 15 (right), with his wife of 25 years, Dawn Andrews (far right). The photo went viral after a sweet family photo showed his son towering over him, but some are surprised by his actual height.
Barron, 18, could be seen towering above the rest of the Republican cohort as they took the stage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
A photo of Bear Grylls and his rarely seen son Marmaduke has resurfaced as the 18-year-old upstaged the adventurer, 50, as they posed for a family photo in April.
The height of British children and its relationship to nutrition became a topic of political conversation earlier this year.
Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer attacked the then Conservative Government over figures showing the UK is falling in international child height rankings.
The country’s average for five-year-old girls fell 27 places in international comparisons between 1985 and 2019, below Portugal, Türkiye and Brazil.
For children, Britain has dropped 33 places over the same period, behind Egypt, Haiti, Ukraine and Argentina.
The data also showed Five-year-old British children are on average 7cm shorter than Dutch children, and some experts blame poor diet.
The average five-year-old child in the United Kingdom is 44.3 inches (112.5 cm) tall, compared to 47.1 inches (119.6 cm) in the Netherlands.
The average girl is about 43.9 inches (111.5 cm) tall, while her Dutch peer is 46.6 inches (118.3 cm), national data collected by the Child Risk Factors Collaboration shows. Non-communicable diseases.
Charities and food campaigners have been quick to blame junk food diets rich in ultra-processed foods in Britain for stunted growth in children.
A report by The Food Foundation found that the average height of five-year-olds has been falling since 2013, with British boys being the shortest and girls the second shortest among developed countries.
The charity’s report noted that this drop in height followed a reduction in the consumption of key nutrients in the average UK diet, including calcium, zinc, vitamin A, folate and iron.