I would argue that food is less healthy today than it was 50 years ago. The "progress" has been in companies learning to process foods with more fat, salt, and sugar in order to make them more palatable, but at the cost of making them less nutritious. I'm not sure if there's a more general rule there.
I would argue that food is less healthy today than it was 50 years ago. The "progress" has been in companies learning to process foods with more fat, salt, and sugar in order to make them more palatable, but at the cost of making them less nutritious. I'm not sure if there's a more general rule there.
Yes and no. Yes, we are eating more processed (even ultraprocessed) food, but we can adhere to the Michael Pollan eating rules to circumvent much of this by making food choices. We are aware of more pesticides, herbicides, and now PFAS in fruit and vegetables, but is that from greater use, of better monitoring? Compared to the fruit and veg I was able to eat as a Brit back in the middle of the last century, the availabity of more choice and better quality due to transport has radically improved the fresh foods. [ Admittedly, I now live in CA, so there is a better choice and quality to start with. But we still get fruits and veg shipped long distances and that is an improvement and reduces seasonality. ] While meat is now often cheaper than fruits and veg, the relentless industrialization of meat production sickens me with its cruelty.
All good points. I suspect most people eat more of the ultraprocessed foods than they did 50 years ago, but the healthier options are more available even if not chosen as often as they should be.
And yeah, moving from England to CA would make a huge difference in the fruits and veggies available to you. :)
It was a one time jump to CA. But I had already seen the issue of transport costs as fruits were shipped across Europe. Great peaches and grapes in Switzerland, poor availability and quality of same in the UK and positively miserable quality in Ireland. And Bermuda - fuggedabboutit.
But over 35 years in CA, I have seen improvements in variety. in grocery stores as the variety improvements have dispersed to the lower quality grocery stores [The local Raleys where I live has almost as good a variety as the upmarket Cosentino or even more upmarket Draegers in Silicon Valley, 30 years ago.]. And look at Costco - the food offerings are hugely improved from just a decade or two ago - with far more "ethnic" items than ever.
The big difference today is that fruits (and possibly veggies) are much sweeter today than they were 50 or 70 years ago. That makes it easier to get the associated vitamins, etc., but it also makes for more sugar in the diet. That trade-off might be worth it (I'd need a nutritionist to say), but there's probably a limit there.
I think the consensus is that we are really not designed for a world with sugarтАФthat in the old world any time a little bit of sugar appears it is immediately gobbled up...
I am not convinced that fruits are sweeter today than in the past. Maybe that is my taste buds declining in old age. :-( However, we do get more access to fruits than vegetables today. The main issue with sugar is that corporate food companies add sugar to foods that did not used to have it added, primarily to increase consumption, and starting with children. Fructose is metabolized differently than glucose and possibly increase risk of insulin resistance. Glucose ( the other half of sucrose) is the core of our energy metalism and is used both in storage as starches in plants and for a host of other molecules in plant and animal metabolism. It is possible that eating starch for carbohydrates is better than sucrose as it does not contain fructose. But this is speculation on my part based on the reported greater insulin restance of fructose vs glucose.
I've read online that modern fruits are sweeter than they used to be, but that's hardly reliable. Looking further because of your response here, I see that others say that they taste sweeter because breeders have successfully eliminated tartness. So having read a bit more, I'm not sure my comment was correct.
As I understand it, sugar in fruits and starches tends not to have the bad impact of added sugar because most fruits and some starches have fiber. That protects you from the effect of sugar according to Dr. Robert Lustig (used to be head of Endocrinology as UC SF med school, but I don't know if he still is).
Fiber certainly slows up digestion reducing the rate of sugar ( and other nutrients) uptake from the gut. It also helps regulate gut microbiota that we now know is so important for health. Interestingly, bariatric surgery to drastically reduce the size of a stomach often eliminates diabetes. However, I have no idea what that does to your large colon if you are forced to reduce fiber intake. Best to eat well - lots of fiber in the diet and reduce sugars (sucrose and digested starch). Cook from scratch to avoid processed foods with added sugars. Rather similar to Michael Pollan's advice: " Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
I would argue that food is less healthy today than it was 50 years ago. The "progress" has been in companies learning to process foods with more fat, salt, and sugar in order to make them more palatable, but at the cost of making them less nutritious. I'm not sure if there's a more general rule there.
Yes and no. Yes, we are eating more processed (even ultraprocessed) food, but we can adhere to the Michael Pollan eating rules to circumvent much of this by making food choices. We are aware of more pesticides, herbicides, and now PFAS in fruit and vegetables, but is that from greater use, of better monitoring? Compared to the fruit and veg I was able to eat as a Brit back in the middle of the last century, the availabity of more choice and better quality due to transport has radically improved the fresh foods. [ Admittedly, I now live in CA, so there is a better choice and quality to start with. But we still get fruits and veg shipped long distances and that is an improvement and reduces seasonality. ] While meat is now often cheaper than fruits and veg, the relentless industrialization of meat production sickens me with its cruelty.
All good points. I suspect most people eat more of the ultraprocessed foods than they did 50 years ago, but the healthier options are more available even if not chosen as often as they should be.
And yeah, moving from England to CA would make a huge difference in the fruits and veggies available to you. :)
It was a one time jump to CA. But I had already seen the issue of transport costs as fruits were shipped across Europe. Great peaches and grapes in Switzerland, poor availability and quality of same in the UK and positively miserable quality in Ireland. And Bermuda - fuggedabboutit.
But over 35 years in CA, I have seen improvements in variety. in grocery stores as the variety improvements have dispersed to the lower quality grocery stores [The local Raleys where I live has almost as good a variety as the upmarket Cosentino or even more upmarket Draegers in Silicon Valley, 30 years ago.]. And look at Costco - the food offerings are hugely improved from just a decade or two ago - with far more "ethnic" items than ever.
The big difference today is that fruits (and possibly veggies) are much sweeter today than they were 50 or 70 years ago. That makes it easier to get the associated vitamins, etc., but it also makes for more sugar in the diet. That trade-off might be worth it (I'd need a nutritionist to say), but there's probably a limit there.
I think the consensus is that we are really not designed for a world with sugarтАФthat in the old world any time a little bit of sugar appears it is immediately gobbled up...
I am not convinced that fruits are sweeter today than in the past. Maybe that is my taste buds declining in old age. :-( However, we do get more access to fruits than vegetables today. The main issue with sugar is that corporate food companies add sugar to foods that did not used to have it added, primarily to increase consumption, and starting with children. Fructose is metabolized differently than glucose and possibly increase risk of insulin resistance. Glucose ( the other half of sucrose) is the core of our energy metalism and is used both in storage as starches in plants and for a host of other molecules in plant and animal metabolism. It is possible that eating starch for carbohydrates is better than sucrose as it does not contain fructose. But this is speculation on my part based on the reported greater insulin restance of fructose vs glucose.
I've read online that modern fruits are sweeter than they used to be, but that's hardly reliable. Looking further because of your response here, I see that others say that they taste sweeter because breeders have successfully eliminated tartness. So having read a bit more, I'm not sure my comment was correct.
As I understand it, sugar in fruits and starches tends not to have the bad impact of added sugar because most fruits and some starches have fiber. That protects you from the effect of sugar according to Dr. Robert Lustig (used to be head of Endocrinology as UC SF med school, but I don't know if he still is).
Fiber certainly slows up digestion reducing the rate of sugar ( and other nutrients) uptake from the gut. It also helps regulate gut microbiota that we now know is so important for health. Interestingly, bariatric surgery to drastically reduce the size of a stomach often eliminates diabetes. However, I have no idea what that does to your large colon if you are forced to reduce fiber intake. Best to eat well - lots of fiber in the diet and reduce sugars (sucrose and digested starch). Cook from scratch to avoid processed foods with added sugars. Rather similar to Michael Pollan's advice: " Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."