Considering the incredibly important role that diet plays in an individual’s health, it is surprising how late it made its way into the mainstream.
In the modern world, the introduction of our diet as something that influences how we live our lives can be pinpointed to around the time vitamins were discovered. The first vitamin to be “discovered” and then chemically defined was Vitamin C, or as it was known at that time, ascorbic acid. Szent-Gyorgyi, the discoverer of the first vitamin, received a Nobel Prize for his work in health and human physiology in 1937. This was two centuries after sailors had established the necessity of using lemons to treat scurvy, a disease caused by the deficiency of vitamin C in the sailors’ diets.
The idea of their being a “vital amine”, something that was important to life, was making its rounds around the beginning of the 20th century as well. Slowly, more and more components of our diets were tested and chemicals were isolated and more diseases were being discovered that were borne out of a lack of a certain nutrient in our diets. For example, it was established that a lack of Vitamin D was causing rickets in young children. Rickets, a horrible disease that left its victims without the use of their legs and other limbs due to growth deformities was treated by supplementing a child’s diet with Vitamin D and Calcium.
By the mid-twentieth century, it had been established that certain diseases were caused by bad diets. All of these revelations, however, came at a time where the issue of malnutrition was at the fore. This was after the world had suffered the horrors of war and economic crises. There was real fear of food shortages and the issue of keeping a healthy populace was becoming a national concern for many countries.
All across the globe, there was a realization by different governments that they need their people to be healthy and diet was playing a big role in the health of a nation. The United States, the UK along with the League of Nations all came up with RDAs (Recommended Daily Allowances) for the public. A daily level of intake of certain nutrients was set and nations began working to have their citizens follow the guidelines that they issued.
This caused there to be a lot of effort being put into developing the agriculture industry in different countries. This is when new types of genetically modified staple foodstuff started to be introduced. A kit of staples like wheat and rice was engineered to start taking up different nutrients from the soil that were lacking in people’s diets like potassium and Iron. Multiple countries (including Pakistan) had their green revolutions. Thankfully, these developments helped stall the fears of food shortages and worries about malnutrition were largely going away.
The focus began to shift away from supplementing diets for lacking certain nutrients to other things.
The world was developing and the advent of new technology made it possible for the information to travel much faster. This allowed for the average consumer to get their hands on scientific data instead of it just being available to the government with their own doctors.
This was the time where the first food pyramid was created as well. In the 1970s in Sweden, there was public outcry over the rising prices of food. This became such an issue that the Swedish government commissioned the creation of daily meals that were economical as well as fulfil basic nutritional requirements. The traditional chart we see of bread at the bottom of the pyramid then entered the global zeitgeist and has stayed there for a few decades at least.
This was the time when the first scientific studies were done about the overconsumption of certain foods as well. It was established that heart disease, cardiovascular issues, and diabetes, all had a link to the diet of the patient. And so the demonification (although not totally uncalled for) of fat was started. The role of fat and sugar in our diets has ever since then been an issue of contention when it comes to nutrition.
After a few decades of being told that there was one balanced diet and everyone had to stick to it, there was a period of time of immense change. New and trendy diets were being introduced in commercials and multiple fad diets came into being.
After the craze of replacing all fat with all sugar in the ’70s was quickly shown to be a misstep when all the evidence came out of the ill effects of sugar.
Many of these were based on bad science and even worse unscrupulous marketing that has deformed our eating patterns for years now. Juicing, Veganism, Vegetarianism, Meat-only, and colour based diets have all come into and gone out of the zeitgeist. This is also the time when moral questions on the kind of diet you had were being raised (but that is an article for another day).
We all have that relative who has lost some weight using a weird and spectacular diet and then tells everyone and their mother how amazing it is to not eat for 16 hours or eat only a certain kind of food for weeks. The keto diet and intermittent fasting are the new buzz diets (or eating patterns in the latter case) for now but there is an issue that is less talked about-
The idea of their being one, general diet that would suit everyone is now being revamped. Our bodies are different and so are our lives and it simply does not make sense to follow the conventional model. For example, a female that swims would require far more calories than a male who works in a cubicle.
There is also the concept that certain people have genes that allow them to do better with certain kinds of diets than others. A popular example of this is the Innuit Diet Paradox. They eat very little greens and get very little sun but are living much healthier lives than those of us closer to the equator with access to both. Apparently, people’s bodies adapt to getting what they need from their surroundings far better than previously thought. They were getting Vitamin D, A and C from the seafood they caught and ate and their bodies were used to doing so. One can think about this model and extend that to people living in different parts of the world with varying diets and then perhaps we can think of having diets made individually instead of generalized for the public in the form of pyramids or circles or other shapes.
The modern approach to diet, and the correct one, is to think about our history. The caveman ate meat, and vegetables, and did not know what sugar or bread was. Perhaps that is what we need to do as well.
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