Child growth reference charts have been used since the 1960s to assess development, implement nutritional surveillance, and compare different population groups. In 2006, a pivotal moment occurred in the history of anthropometry and nutritional assessment. The World Health Organization (WHO) released new growth charts for international comparison after thirty years of having promoted the use of charts developed by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and US National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). According to the WHO, these charts indicate how children should grow for the best health outcome in contrast to the NCHS/CDC charts that indicated how the average child grows. This shift from a descriptive to a prescriptive –and rather normative– approach allowed the WHO to state that all children in the world have the potential to grow and develop within the same range of height and weight; thus, suggesting that all children should develop in a specific standardized way regardless of ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and diet. From a STS perspective, this paper discusses how these standards can be understood as artifacts for human standardization and how specific values, knowledge claims and ideals regarding children’s bodies and their health status are mobilized in their process of design, use, and propagation.