By the time of the American Revolution, the average American colonial man was at least 3 inches taller than the typical British soldier. During the British Siege of Boston, a British officer wrote home concerning the rural colonials, "remarkably tall and robust, and they are much better fed than our men."
British travelers before the war were astounded by the American diet, journaling excitedly that a man could eat three meals of meat a day. The typical Englishman was used to purely urban-oriented living, and diets composed mostly of breads, grains, and starches. They described with jealousy of no laws outlawing hunting the king's deer in the king's forest. They also paid particular attention to their backcountry behaviors and comfort in abject wilderness. This was nearly incomprehensible to the British recruits who had lived their entire lives in the urban slums of London and Liverpool. They described the Americans as "trained from their infancy to the use of the rifle."