In contemporary societies life expectancy and quality of health have been increasing. There are various reasons for this: sanitation, medicine, etc. have played major roles, but nutrition has been a big part of it.
I'm sure the availability of food played a big part in lifespan, but not the quality. I'm not sure if nutrition plays much of a role at all (until the 70's when food started turning to ****)
Wikipedia's life expectancy page claims that average life expectancy was virtually the same from paleolithic times until the beginning of the twentieth century (actually two years less), which indicates that medicine, sanitation, and effective distribution played the major part, and of that mainly by reducing infant mortality (and hence raising he average),along with curing disease and keeping sick people alive longer.
In fact caloric restriction (fasting -involuntary or not) seems to be the simplest and most effective way of increasing lifespan
However, that means that the current and most recent generations have been the healthiest – healthier than those who lived prior to the development of so much processed food - even though they’ve had the most “unnatural” diets to date. This seems to me to suggest that it is not processed foods themselves that are the problem...
I interpret this differently, the most healthy long lived generation was the one who grew up with the sanitation, health care and food distribution BUT before or during the advent of modern highly processed packaged foods.
Trans fats, vegetable oils, HFCS, chemical additives and highly processed carbs all started in that generation, and is reflected in the skyrocketing of modern disease .
The most unhealthy generation is the one growing up fully immersed in "the most unnatural diet to date".
it’s when diet is taken to extremes, such as when so much food is consumed by an individual that he becomes morbidly obese, for example. The abundance of easily available food which contemporary societies now have is largely responsible for this, and I expect the development of all sorts of unnatural production and storage methods have made food so accessible. (Though a person could also become morbidly obese by eating natural nuts, which are high in calories, and suffer similar health problems.)
There is a lot of research, but most of it is directed towards maintaining the status quo and making money from it.
When the data is analysed objectively the commonly held view (commonly held because it has been repeated so many times -must be true if everyone says it) that calories in vs calories out and laziness causes obesity falls apart.
The body handles different calories differently.
To vastly oversimplify....
-Carbs cause insulin release which causes fat storage and retention
-Fat doesn't (there are problems with some fats , some cause inflammation and affect cholesterol negatively)
I agree that “The abundance of easily available food“ is the problem but these foods are corn,wheat,soy and sugar,- processed foods, with a side of trans fats to make it sit on the shelf longer.
I challenge you to find anyone made obese by nuts (there may be other health issues, too much omega-6 is inflammatory), but it just doesn't happen.
But plenty of people are managing to live on a diet which includes unnatural foods without becoming obese and without developing any nutritional deficiencies or any other diet-induced problems.
seriously?
-Coronary heart disease (CHD) only took off in the early 20th century (independent of life expectancy), which coincided with an increase in smoking, refined sugar, refined seed oils and trans fats
-Cancer death rates in Australia have increased from 7% male, 8% female in 1909 to 31% male, 26% female in 2002 (higher life expectancy would have contributed).
-The obesity epidemic is fairly recent, although there were still a lot of overweight people in the US during the 1960’s. Likewise childhood obesity was almost non-existent in the 1930s
-In the UK, “the prevalence of diagnosed allergic rhinitis and eczema in children have both trebled over the last three decades” and “since 1990, admissions for anaphylaxis have increased by 700%, for food allergy by 500”
-Autisim changing from 1:10000 to 1:66 in 40 years
Ultimately, a moderate diet which includes processed food has led to far healthier populations than those that existed in the times prior to food processing.
only in a tiny part due to food, mainly other factors (as discussed), and then health starting to fall, probably from 1970 onwards due industrialisation of food production
Of course it also depends how you define “natural”. Does your diet include foods that have been transported from other geographical locations, produced with modern farming methods, or even just cooked? You could consider the resulting food to be in an “unnatural” state. If you tried existing off raw meat and wild fruits, I’m guessing you wouldn’t feel too great.
Cooking dates back about 2.5 million years and is probably the single most significant event in out evolution as **** sapiens, it is not a modern thing, but having said that, crudos, steak tartare, sushi, oysters, anyone?
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