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"The 40-something's list of complaints include... hardened arteries, gallstones..." Stuff like this makes me wonder how much of current health scares about mod

"The 40-something's list of complaints include... hardened arteries, gallstones..." Stuff like this makes me wonder how much of current health scares about modern diets (HFCS, glutton, carbs, dairy, GMOs, bad food of the month) should be taken seriously. The narrative presented is often that our bodies aren't suited to modern diets and people used to be a lot more healthy. It's too bad we don't have more long dead guys to fill the research gap.

danmaz74 13y ago
Oetzi was clearly the victim of dehumanizing, evil modern technologies, like agriculture and metallurgy...
- jere 13y ago
  Nice sarcasm, but... >he had alarming levels of arsenic in his system (probably due to working with metal ores and copper extraction) Also, the argument here that "since he wasn't eating a modern diet and still had health problems, we can't blame health problems on our modern diet" is somewhat silly. Diets like paleo are clearly against grains, which Otzi definitely ate (for all we know, that was most of his diet [1]... this guy was alive long after the advent of agriculture). Paleo (and similar diet) proponents would tell you that the cause of his gallstones and bad teeth were a high grain diet. To be clear, I'm not arguing that those claims are accurate, only that the logic in the OP doesn't directly counter such claims. Furthermore, the short life expectancy argument already being trotted out in this thread is pure bull. Life expectancy, which was mainly low due to infant mortality, dropped when agriculture was introduced and didn't recover until last century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy... [1] http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/04/lessons-from-otzi-tyrolean-ice-man-part_17.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/04/lessons-from-o...
  - bane 13y ago
    The figures provided in WP are for a 1961 Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB). Modern studies of contemporary primitive people groups shows markedly different life expectancy figures and reasoning. For example the neolithic life expectancy drop is now not considered to have been as severe attributed to communicable diseases introduced by domesticating livestock not grain introduction -- I'd add that our sample size of Neolithic dead people is also pitifully small. Another easy to research example, we know from historic records that life expectancy in 19th century Ireland was near the top of the table you provided in WP, but was considered quite low for the time period in Western Europe. Other data shows that by 1900 U.S. life expectancy was already ~50 which is almost double the figure provided by EB. Another way to think about it is, unless humans rapidly developed an ability to handle grains in the last couple hundred years, life expectancy should still be at or around historic numbers, not at around double. People should still be dropping dead from diets of grains, but they don't. So an external causal agent other than grains (livestock domestication, introduction of alcohol, large scale warfare, highly virulent diseases) must be the logical conclusion. The figures are off for Classical Rome as well. Depending on your social class life expectancy was around 40 for the lower classes and around 60 for the upper classes. Other studies show that if a child made it through their first 5 years, they could be expected to live to around 50 regardless of social class. It wasn't considered unusual to see people in their 60s and even early 70s even if the percentage of population in those ages was much smaller than today. But of course documentation isn't very good either leading to those conflicting figures. Another case, Australia spent about 30 years trying to get the life expectancy of Aboriginals up to any kind of reasonable number. I believe the gap when they started studying it was about 20 years. Grains were not causing non-Aboriginals to drop dead before their Aboriginal hunter gatherer neighbors. I'm generally suspicious of any expectancy tables for any population that don't start at around 35-40 for any time period. Numbers lower than that are almost always the cause of a catastrophic external factor like the Black Death. There are pitifully few well documented populations where life expectancy isn't at least in the 40s. This goes for hunter gatherer tribes to the most war-torn inhospitable genocide suffering places on the planet with access to virtually no healthcare and unbelievable infant mortality rates but plenty of grains. The introduction of a staple bearing diet had little effect on life expectancy numbers directly, but enabled other advances which did.
    - 13y ago
- baddox 13y ago
  > agriculture He was a farmer. Agriculture was widespread in southern Europe in 3300 BC. One of his last meals included highly processed grains.
hcarvalhoalves 13y ago
> The narrative presented is often that our bodies aren't suited to modern diets and people used to be a lot more healthy. It's true we eat a lot of processed crap today, but if you read about a diet and see any claims that people used to be a lot more healthy you can probably ignore the rest. The paleo diet for instance, which is big nowadays, isn't based on any knowledge about what humans actually ate during the paleolithic [1]. What people forget is that the lifespan of the average human used to be much shorter, and our ancestors just had to live long enough to have offspring instead of living healthy long lives for us to be here today. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8
- throwaway2048 13y ago
  this is something that is often misunderstood about pre-modern life expectancy. When life expectancy is calculated it includes infant mortality and child mortality, which historicly was extremely high. If you managed to live past about 10 or so in an ancient soceity your life expectancy was typically 70 or better.
  - adamnemecek 13y ago
    Yeah, it kind of blew my mind when I learned this as well.
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    That seems like something you could cite. Not the misunderstanding of life expectancy at birth vs after childhood, the 70 year figure.
  - tokenadult 13y ago
    No. (And I learned some of the references for this here on Hacker News, and others by personally knowing local researchers on extreme longevity.) Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-why-we-die-global-life-expectancy http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w... An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why" gives more of the background. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/life_expectancy_history_public_health_and_medical_advances_that_lead_to.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...
sliverstorm 13y ago
It's that old joke all over again; A new nuclear reactor was built near town. Not long after, residents began complaining of headaches, nausea, trouble sleeping, tiredness, and a host of other issues. The lead engineer on the project commented with a grin: "You think that's something, just wait 'til this baby's operational!"
Mikeb85 13y ago
The only bad thing about modern diets is the lack of moderation and common sense. We have access to more food, and better food than ever before.

danmaz74 13y ago

Oetzi was clearly the victim of dehumanizing, evil modern technologies, like agriculture and metallurgy...

jere 13y ago
Nice sarcasm, but... >he had alarming levels of arsenic in his system (probably due to working with metal ores and copper extraction) Also, the argument here that "since he wasn't eating a modern diet and still had health problems, we can't blame health problems on our modern diet" is somewhat silly. Diets like paleo are clearly against grains, which Otzi definitely ate (for all we know, that was most of his diet [1]... this guy was alive long after the advent of agriculture). Paleo (and similar diet) proponents would tell you that the cause of his gallstones and bad teeth were a high grain diet. To be clear, I'm not arguing that those claims are accurate, only that the logic in the OP doesn't directly counter such claims. Furthermore, the short life expectancy argument already being trotted out in this thread is pure bull. Life expectancy, which was mainly low due to infant mortality, dropped when agriculture was introduced and didn't recover until last century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy_variation_over_time http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy#Life_expectancy... [1] http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/04/lessons-from-otzi-tyrolean-ice-man-part_17.html http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2012/04/lessons-from-o...
- bane 13y ago
  The figures provided in WP are for a 1961 Encyclopaedia Britannica (EB). Modern studies of contemporary primitive people groups shows markedly different life expectancy figures and reasoning. For example the neolithic life expectancy drop is now not considered to have been as severe attributed to communicable diseases introduced by domesticating livestock not grain introduction -- I'd add that our sample size of Neolithic dead people is also pitifully small. Another easy to research example, we know from historic records that life expectancy in 19th century Ireland was near the top of the table you provided in WP, but was considered quite low for the time period in Western Europe. Other data shows that by 1900 U.S. life expectancy was already ~50 which is almost double the figure provided by EB. Another way to think about it is, unless humans rapidly developed an ability to handle grains in the last couple hundred years, life expectancy should still be at or around historic numbers, not at around double. People should still be dropping dead from diets of grains, but they don't. So an external causal agent other than grains (livestock domestication, introduction of alcohol, large scale warfare, highly virulent diseases) must be the logical conclusion. The figures are off for Classical Rome as well. Depending on your social class life expectancy was around 40 for the lower classes and around 60 for the upper classes. Other studies show that if a child made it through their first 5 years, they could be expected to live to around 50 regardless of social class. It wasn't considered unusual to see people in their 60s and even early 70s even if the percentage of population in those ages was much smaller than today. But of course documentation isn't very good either leading to those conflicting figures. Another case, Australia spent about 30 years trying to get the life expectancy of Aboriginals up to any kind of reasonable number. I believe the gap when they started studying it was about 20 years. Grains were not causing non-Aboriginals to drop dead before their Aboriginal hunter gatherer neighbors. I'm generally suspicious of any expectancy tables for any population that don't start at around 35-40 for any time period. Numbers lower than that are almost always the cause of a catastrophic external factor like the Black Death. There are pitifully few well documented populations where life expectancy isn't at least in the 40s. This goes for hunter gatherer tribes to the most war-torn inhospitable genocide suffering places on the planet with access to virtually no healthcare and unbelievable infant mortality rates but plenty of grains. The introduction of a staple bearing diet had little effect on life expectancy numbers directly, but enabled other advances which did.
  - 13y ago
baddox 13y ago
> agriculture He was a farmer. Agriculture was widespread in southern Europe in 3300 BC. One of his last meals included highly processed grains.

hcarvalhoalves 13y ago

> The narrative presented is often that our bodies aren't suited to modern diets and people used to be a lot more healthy. It's true we eat a lot of processed crap today, but if you read about a diet and see any claims that people used to be a lot more healthy you can probably ignore the rest. The paleo diet for instance, which is big nowadays, isn't based on any knowledge about what humans actually ate during the paleolithic [1]. What people forget is that the lifespan of the average human used to be much shorter, and our ancestors just had to live long enough to have offspring instead of living healthy long lives for us to be here today. [1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMOjVYgYaG8

throwaway2048 13y ago
this is something that is often misunderstood about pre-modern life expectancy. When life expectancy is calculated it includes infant mortality and child mortality, which historicly was extremely high. If you managed to live past about 10 or so in an ancient soceity your life expectancy was typically 70 or better.
- adamnemecek 13y ago
  Yeah, it kind of blew my mind when I learned this as well.
- maxerickson 13y ago
  That seems like something you could cite. Not the misunderstanding of life expectancy at birth vs after childhood, the 70 year figure.
- tokenadult 13y ago
  No. (And I learned some of the references for this here on Hacker News, and others by personally knowing local researchers on extreme longevity.) Life expectancy at age 40, at age 60, and at even higher ages is still rising throughout the developed countries of the world. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-why-we-die-global-life-expectancy http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=longevity-w... An article in a series on Slate, "Why Are You Not Dead Yet? Life expectancy doubled in past 150 years. Here’s why" gives more of the background. http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_longevity/2013/09/life_expectancy_history_public_health_and_medical_advances_that_lead_to.html http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science_of_...

sliverstorm 13y ago

It's that old joke all over again; A new nuclear reactor was built near town. Not long after, residents began complaining of headaches, nausea, trouble sleeping, tiredness, and a host of other issues. The lead engineer on the project commented with a grin: "You think that's something, just wait 'til this baby's operational!"

Mikeb85 13y ago

The only bad thing about modern diets is the lack of moderation and common sense. We have access to more food, and better food than ever before.