You should check out the book “The Big Fat Surprise”.
with that though they mentioned that prior to the early 1900s there weren’t really any record keeping of what Americans ate. What they did have was old letters, essays, books, etc from folks that visited America prior to 1900 (mostly Europeans). It was pretty universally noted that there was so much game and meat in America that we “were quite lazy and careless” with the work of growing food.
it was noted that during that time period American ate almost 3 times more meat than Europeans did and that a “breakfast wasn’t a breakfast without a T-bone steak”
short version - lack of disease, lots of meat, low on carbs because it actually took work to grow them and meat was easily available.
The difference between early Americans and Europeans in the early 1900's is most of America (outside of the few majori cities )lived in very rural areas and worked pretty hard from sun up to sun down. They at a breakfast that provided carbohydrates and a slow digesting protein that covered their nutritional needs while working their filed, most went to be early to get up with th esun and work their fields again. I am sure most Europeans who came here only saw the bigger cites and probably did see a certain extent of lazieness. However most of the population started moving Westward during the early 1800's and by the 1900's approximately 45.9 million people, or 60.4% of the U.S. population, lived in rural areas. Both sides of my family were among the old 300 settlers to come to Texas. These settlers were granted land under a system that provided each head of household with either one sitio (about 4,428 acres) for ranching or one labor (about 177 acres) for farming, with additional land for wives, children, and slaves. These grants were given to Moses Austin and Stephen F, Austoin by Spain, to settle 300 Anglo families in Texas. The settlers began arriving in December 1821, and by the end of the summer of 1824, most of the original 300 families were in Texas. Contrairy to what you say, their mainstays included potatoes, beans, rice, breads, hardtack, soda biscuits, cornbread, cornmeal mush, and other starchy foods that provided essential energy for their physically demanding lives. They grew all of this themselves.
IN our few large cities people lived in tenements which were notoriously poor in living conditions, often consisting of just two rooms with no indoor plumbing, inadequate ventilation, and minimal natural light. Families frequently lived in cramped spaces, with some rooms housing up to 12 people. The lack of sanitation and poor hygiene led to the spread of diseases such as cholera, typhoid, smallpox, and tuberculosis, and infant mortality rates were alarmingly high. So yea, white these settlers who were our 1st ranchers and farmers ate a lot of meat, they did work hard to grow what they ate. Now here is the hard truth..... life expectancy at birth in 1900 was approximately 48 years for white Americans and 33 years for African Americans. Was it diet, hard work or perhaps lack of medicine? Penicillin was discovered in 1928.
Now in short, In short,
The Big Fat Surprise ( yea I did a quick summary) argues that the war on fat was a colossal, decades-long mistake driven by bad science and institutional inertia, and that traditional high-fat foods can safely return to the center of a healthy diet.
Can't disagree with what they are selling, but I know from old letters etc and reports from my direct family members that did live rural America during the 1900's, they were far from lazy, far from not knowing how to kill wild game, and far from careless in growing what they ate and did in fact, grow and eat carbohydrates. To my knowledge ALL of my direct desendants were avid hunters and farmers. Most of the old Southern menues we use today were from people who settled rural America. The early Cajuns were famous for eating what was available in the swampy areas of SouthernLouisiana. American settlers were very famous for being very hard workers living in a harsh environment and they raised and grew evernthing they ate.
Back in the warlky 2000's I knew a researcher at the Shriner's Burn institute in Galveston, Texas. His speciality was nutritional metabolism. This was back when Mauro DI Pasquale's Anabolic Diet came out. I ask this researcher what he thought the optimal diet was. He said there is not really an optimal diet and the fact that human's have existed maybe 16 million years has show that we are able to adapt to any diet. Cave men weren't carnivors they were hunters/gathers and at what they could find. My cat is a carnivor...true carnivores are animals whose diet consists almost exclusively of animal flesh, and they possess anatomical and physiological adaptations suited for this lifestyle. Their jaws move only up and down, allowing them to tear chunks of flesh, and they have sharp, pointed canine teeth and carnassial teeth designed for shearing meat. Their digestive systems are short and highly acidic, with a stomach
pH of 1 or less, which helps kill pathogens in meat and allows for rapid digestion of animal protein. Ihpe this doesn't upset people who love th ecarnivor diet bu the truth is human jaws can move both vertically and horizontally, enabling the grinding of
plant material, and our molars are flat and adapted for crushing
fibrous foods like fruits and vegetables. Our digestive tract is longer than that of carnivores, which is more suitable for processing
plant-based foods and extracting nutrients from fiber. Additionally, human stomach acidity is mildly acidic, with a
pH between 4 and 5, which is more similar to herbivores than to carnivores. Yes, humans are omnivores. Which goes back to what the nutrition resrearcher explained to me. The fact that humans can eat a vairiety of food is why we have existed for 16 million years.
The bottom line is my wife eats mostly meat because of cultural preferences. So is it the meat preference that equated to life expectancy? Well lets look, as of 2023, the average life expectancy in Argentina is 77.39 years. In comparison, the average life expectancy in the United States is 81 years. So it is diet? Like i figured...experts believe it is due to a combination of socioeconomic, health, and structural factors. We all know Americans eat like shit right?
OK, I talked a whole lot about this but when you get right down to it, we do know high amounts of surars is definitely not so good for us. Eating carbohydrates is not so bad as our system is adapted to it, eating meats is not bad but certainly not a panacea as we are not as able to digest protein like a carnivor can. We can adapt. So the best bet is eat a variety of foods, invcluding meats, cut the sugars and processed shit, the human body has an amazing capability to adapt. We ARE NOT carnivors but eating lots of meat is not going to be the end of the world. We are omnivors.
jissn.biomedcentral.com
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