11 ms·
The mid-Victorian diet was a mini golden age of nutrition
- clock_tower 11y agoI'd never heard of this, but it makes sense: satisfying fruits and vegetables (artichokes, onions, beets, apples, cherries), some bread (whole-grain, I'd guess), a little meat. Doubtless tea, too, and a little chocolate, but minimal sugar. This is definitely a diet to keep in mind! The article's point on life expectancies, also, is timeless. In almost any era, if you make it to 5 years old, you'll make it to 70. (This was as true in the Middle Ages as in the mid-Victorian period.) When we see life expectancies of 30 or 40 years, it's a sign that most people didn't make it to 5...
- cgh 11y agoCorrection: a lot of meat. The diet was basically animal protein and vegetables. In their linked studies, the authors make it clear that offal in particular was consumed far more heavily than today. I guess it was cheaper than skeletal muscle meat.
- clock_tower 11y agoGuess what linked studies I was saving to read after work... :P Still interesting, though. I'll definitely take a look at this in more detail.
- RogtamBar 11y agoOffal not only was, but is cheaper than skeletal meat. Hearts, for example, are good meat. You can get them for 1$ per pound. Tastes very similar to normal muscle, but it's darker. Which is why they're always sold out after 11 am..
- 11thEarlOfMar 11y agoYeah, we used to get chicken livers at Kentucky Fried Chicken. Funny, I'd forgotten about that until now.
- AdmiralAsshat 11y agoOur study in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (here, here, and here) shows that the majority of the Victorian urban poor consumed diets which were limited, but contained extremely high nutrient density. Bread could be expensive but onions, watercress, cabbage, and fruit like apples and cherries were all cheap and did not need to be carefully budgeted for. Show me a grocery store where fresh watercress and cherries are cheaper than some artificial crap loaded with added sugar, sodium, and preservatives, and people will start to eat healthier.
- ghaff 11y agoWatercress and cherries are relatively expensive but I think you'll find that onions, cabbage, and apples are all priced quite competitively with a lot of processed food.
- wdewind 11y agoBy volume or mass yes, by calorie absolutely not. Edit: I totally misunderstood the comment I was replying to and agree with it.
- johnchristopher 11y agoBut that should even things out, right ?
- hueving 11y agoA single apple runs in the $0.30-$0.50 range where I'm at. It has 52 calories and 0.3 grams of protein. A mcdouble is $1 and it contains 390 calories and 22 grams of protein. Eating fresh fruit is cheap, but it's still not as cost effective as some fast food, let alone processed food in the grocery store.
- ghaff 11y agoAccording to this study http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/healthy-vs-unhealthy-diet-costs-1-50-more/ http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/news/press-releases/healthy-vs-u... healthier diet patterns--fresh meat, vegetables, etc.--cost about $1.50 more per day. So, yes, there is some difference and meal prep etc. certainly takes longer. However, the processed food is so much cheaper argument can also be overstated.
- ergothus 11y agoThe comments on the article are quire interesting, at least to me, as they show a community that is very confident (even when they disagree with each other) about broad food "right-ness".
- backtoyoujim 11y agoThe English show "The Supersizer" did a great take on the Victorian diet. Too bad that it is not on their youtube channel because it is on many other youtube channels.
- zkhalique 11y agoI'm sorry but what in the article actually makes a solid body of evidence in support of its thesis?
- Florin_Andrei 11y agoIt may be worth pointing out that this is an article intended for a broad audience, not a scholarly work on PubMed. But I do agree that providing some links to actual data, at the end, would have been useful.
- cgh 11y agoThe start of paragraph six provides three links to related studies.
- Shorel 11y agoThe actual diet, or at least some examples of dishes, something I think is very interesting for a broad audience, and the reason I clicked the link, is only mentioned in the comments. And those examples would not had made the article something for PubMed.
- agarden 11y agoAgreed. The key point in the article is that mid-Victorians had a similar life-expectancy to our own. From there it just assumes that dietary changes are what caused life expectancy to decline, starting in the late-Victorian era. That's an awful lot of assuming. The interesting thing to me was not the dietary claims, but the claims about life expectancy. If those are correct, then it does rather strongly suggest that the mid-Victorians were doing something right that we have now got wrong. Or perhaps just that modern medicine has not done as much to advance life expectancy as is generally thought.
- david-given 11y agoI'd want to check references on the life expectancy. Quick web searching shows that it was about 40 years, but I don't know whether that's life expectancy from birth or not. (Very bad child mortality will artificially lower the average life expectancy.) I have found some mentions that adult life expectancy from age 5 was as good as it is now... all of which appear to be by the article authors. Given that a lot of Victorian children over the age of 5 were working, and frequently at dangerous jobs, I'd be very hesitant about accepting that figure.
- WorldMaker 11y agoI could imagine choosing to describe one's diet as Mid-Victorian solely for the bonus points it would earn one at the next Steampunk meetup.
- mcguire 11y ago"A return to mid-Victorian eating habits is not feasible, given their high calorie intake and our low-energy lifestyles. This would exacerbate our already alarming rates of overweight and obesity, problems which were uncommon and mostly confined to the urban upper middle classes in the mid-Victorian period but which have become major public health concerns today. Instead, we recommend that the modern diet be re-engineered, integrating the micro- and phytonutritional elements of the mid-Victorian 3500–4000 calorie/day diet into the modern 2200 calorie/day diet. [...] The realities of a need to promote an intake of nutrients at a level not naturally available in today's 2200 calorie/day diet does require the vexed issue of food fortification and supplements to be included in strategic public health policy formation. Inevitably, this also means that it will have to be reflected in the regulatory sphere."[1] Possible translation: If you're going to follow a Victorian diet, you need to get lower- and middle-class Victorian amounts of exercise: enough to support a 3500-4000 calorie/day diet. Me, I'm personally wondering if the true bottom-line here is that you could skip the whole diet thing and get the health benefits purely from a high-exercise lifestyle? (A very high-exercise lifestyle.) [1] "An unsuitable and degraded diet? Part three: Victorian consumption patterns and their health benefits". [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2587384/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2587384/].
- nikatwork 11y agoTFA seems to be fingering carbs and sugar as the key issue, rather than total calories.
- pjlegato 11y agoIf you'd like to know what the daily life of mid-Victorian poor people was like in excruciating detail, check out "London Labour and the London Poor" by Henry Mayhew: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_Poor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Labour_and_the_London_P... A major point of interest is that the oceans had not yet been overfished, so fresh fish was an abundant and extremely cheap source of protein that formed a major constituent of most poor people's diet at the time.
- HillaryBriss 11y agoyes. and i suspect that one must pay more today for meat from animals that are comparable to those in Victorian times. our cows, pigs and chickens are fed differently than they were back then. and it's not just a matter of feed quality. it's a matter of new ingredients (e.g. some chickens are fed small amounts of arsenic to change their flesh color and as an antibiotic for certain diseases. and who knows what the hell goes into farmed fresh water fish - it's literally animal sewage and garbage on some farms in certain parts of the world.)
- mhartl 11y agoForget paleo, go mid-Victorian […] Bread could be expensive but onions, watercress, cabbage, and fruit like apples and cherries were all cheap and did not need to be carefully budgeted for. Beetroot was eaten all year round; Jerusalem artichokes were often home-grown. Fish such as herrings and meat in some form (scraps, chops and even joints) were common too. So, a diet with little to no bread that's focused on vegetables and meat (including fish)—sounds pretty paleo to me.
- mcguire 11y agoCall me cynically suspicious, but reading the related articles makes me think this is intended to indirectly support the supplement industry. "[To provide remedies for the appalling state of our health,] Look, instead, to the food and beverage industries, and to a lesser extent the supplement companies, who may well step up to the plate with better designed foods and nutritional programmes once the currently profoundly counter-productive regulatory system has been re-drafted."[1] Key parts of the argument seem to be that the Victorian diet was better, not necessarily because of the types of foods, but because of the large amounts of micro- and phytonutritional elements ingested. It's not possible to make use of the massive caloric intake today, so...pills. [1] How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died. Paul Clayton and Judith Rowbotham. [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/].
- alvern 11y ago>"In the 1870s Victorian health was challenged by cheap sugar and the first generation of mass-processed high-salt and high-sugar foods. This dragged urban health and life expectancy to a nadir around 1900 — a date that consequently provides a highly misleading baseline. (The trend was even reflected in people’s height. The minimum height for infantry was lowered from 5ft 6in to 5ft 3in, then later to 5ft, in just two decades.)" High salt and high sugar led to a shrinking height. Could this be applied to how the average height is rising in the US?
- agarden 11y agoIn my opinion, the interesting thing about the article is not the diet, it is the claim that if you remove death during and shortly after childbirth, mid-Victorian era life expectancy was about the same as ours now. If true, that's a startling counterpoint to the prevailing narrative of modern medicine's triumph.
- solipsism 11y agoQuality of life should be considered as well.
- xiaoma 11y agoWhy is everyone on this thread so obsessed with protein? If there's anything most western diets have a surplus of compared to traditional Asian or African diets, it's protein. Unless you're a vegan who likes junk food over whole foods, it shouldn't be a problem.