Health And Diet Now Versus 50 Years Ago

4 Pages 1122 Words

Over the course of evolution human beings adapted gradually to a wide range of naturally occurring foods. Due to advances in technology and disease the intake and the way in which we think of these foods has changed dramatically. Diet and nutrition research goes on in almost every medical school, university, and pharmaceutical laboratory throughout the world. Thus, the knowledge of how to prevent illness and maintain health through nutrition grows every year.
Due to the rapid rise in chronic illness in recent decades, the focus of nutrition research has shifted from eliminating nutritional deficiency resulting from undernutrition to dealing with chronic diseases caused by nutritional excess or “overnutrition”. The 1950’s marked the beginning of making comparisons and linking diet and chronic diseases. A persons diet from the 1950s contrasts greatly to that of someone’s today due to economic, technological, and disease related changes.
Because the changes in the dietary patterns of the more technological developed countries, such as the United States, have been so dramatic and rapid, the people consuming these affluent diets have had little time to adapt biologically to the types an quantities of food available to them today. Thus, when comparing health of the people from 50 years ago to that of the average person now there is a great difference. “A survey looking at the diet records of 4,600 children age 4 in 1950, and compared them with similar records taken in 1992 proved that the post war generation children; Ate more bread and milk, increasing their fiber and calcium intake, Drank few soft drinks, deriving less of their energy from sugar, Got most of their vitamin C from vegetables rather than juices and drinks, Ate more red meat, giving them more iron, and had more fat in their diet.” (http://www.news.bbc.com.uk/1/hi/health/542205.stm) The diet of 1950’s children closely follows current recommendations on healthy ea...