This is also a multi-generational process involving epigenetics, to further support your point. Parents who suffer famine during their own childhood pass on these epigenetic flags that cause their children to have these adaptations to food insecurity activated, which generally makes them shorter than they would otherwise be (since someone who is physically smaller needs less food) and store fat more readily whenever possible leaving them with more of a safety buffer if food stops being available.

It's really fascinating on like a meta level how there's this sort of layer of reactive temporary inheritance for some traits, where an evolved adaptation can be turned on or off based on multi-generational material conditions like that, because something that's a desirable and life-saving adaptation to an unstable, famine-prone environment becomes a liability in prolonged periods of stability and plenty.

[–] Azarova@hexbear.net 11 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Just to add on to your point, this effect has been shown to be triggered over a relatively short period of time. The Dutch Hunger Winter of 1944-1945 caused by the Nazis blockading urban centers in the Netherlands under their control from the rural food producing areas triggered this epigenetic adaptiation in the children and pregnant mothers (who passed it on to their then unborn children) that were affected. All from a single famine lasting from roughly late September/early October 1944 until early May 1945.