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"Our recent research indicates that the mid-Victorians’ good health was entirely due to their superior diet. This period was, nutritionally speaking, an island
by Normal_gaussian 9y ago
"Our recent research indicates that the mid-Victorians’ good health was entirely due to their superior diet. This period was, nutritionally speaking, an island in time; one that was created and subsequently squandered by economic and political forces. This begs a series of questions. How did this brief nutritional ‘golden age’ come about? How was it lost? And could we recreate it?"
Very interesting. My take on the rest of it shows that they ate more vegetables relative to calorific intake, and less sugar. I'm not convinced on the drinking or tobacco comments - I think these are things that are not as prevalent in my generation as much as the authors may have thought it is.
- arghwhat 9y agoThe article needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Our infant mortality has gone down, leading to many more "weaker" individuals making it past five (of course a positive thing for most). These individuals are likely to have a shorter lifetime expectancy (sometimes far too short), dragging down the average. These individuals are sorted out entirely in the historic data, as they would not have made it till 5 years of age back then, which is the age they use for the comparison. In other words, it does not produce any evidence that a healthy individual from back then is any healthier than a healthy individual now. It merely shows that our weak individuals live longer than back then, turning an infant death into a maybe decent life.
- unknown_apostle 9y agoYes but they also compare mid 1800s with late 1800s. No data readily available, but I assume it was still quite high in the late 1800s, especially with the working classes.
- Chris2048 9y agowasn't sugar fairly expensive at some time?
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