The video explores the historical perspective on nutrition and how lessons from the past may be crucial for healthier modern diets. It delves into how dietary practices from previous centuries, such as Mediterranean and Asian diets, offer valuable insights into balanced eating. These diets emphasized whole grains and fermented foods, which current nutrition scientists now endorse for their health benefits, countering many modern processed food issues.
Key historical figures in nutrition such as Harriet Chick and Janet Lane Claypon are highlighted. These pioneers made significant scientific contributions to understanding nutritional deficiencies like beriberi and scurvy through their wartime efforts. Their research laid the foundation for modern nutritional science, although their stories often remain overshadowed by those of famous physicists and chemists.
Main takeaways from the video:
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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:
1. epidemiology [ˌɛpɪˌdiːmiˈɒlədʒi] - (n.) - The study of how diseases affect the health and illness of populations. - Synonyms: (disease study, public health study, medical investigation)
epidemiology was coming to reveal that beriberi was not the communicative disease that they thought it was.
2. scurvy [ˈskɜːrvi] - (n.) - A disease caused by a deficiency of vitamin C, characterized by swollen gums and spots on the skin. - Synonyms: (vitamin C deficiency, nutritional disease, malnutrition-related illness)
They reported back that they were struggling with beriberi and scurvy.
3. beriberi [ˌbɛrɪˈbɛrɪ] - (n.) - A nutritional disorder caused by a deficiency of vitamin B1. - Synonyms: (vitamin B1 deficiency, thiamine deficiency, nutritional disease)
They reported back that they were struggling with beriberi and scurvy.
4. rickets [ˈrɪkɪts] - (n.) - A disease in children caused by vitamin D deficiency, leading to softening and weakening of the bones. - Synonyms: (vitamin D deficiency, bone disease, child malnutrition disease)
Harriet went on to also figure out about rickets, that it was both a nutritional and an environmental disease.
5. hyperpalatability [haɪpərˌpælɪˈtæbɪlɪti] - (n.) - The quality of being extremely appealing to eat due to the combination of fat, sugar, and salt. - Synonyms: (extreme tastiness, irresistible flavor, highly appealing taste)
What is surprising is that meat based dishes have almost kept pace with the grains in the hyperpalatability race based on the increasing fat content from marbling
6. palatable [ˈpælətəbl] - (adj.) - Pleasant to taste or easily acceptable. - Synonyms: (tasty, agreeable, enjoyable)
Modern fruit has become sweeter, but not to the point of becoming hyper palatable.
7. corpulence [ˈkɔːpjʊləns] - (n.) - The state of being fat or overweight. - Synonyms: (obesity, plumpness, stoutness)
Thomas Waad, surgeon to the king, wrote a popular book in 1812 about corpulence as a disease, and it advocated returning to a diet that was plant rich whole foods, much like every country's health diet is today
8. sedentary [ˈsɛdəntɛri] - (adj.) - Characterized by sitting or remaining inactive for most of the time. - Synonyms: (inactive, stationary, deskbound)
...only in the 20th century did humans come to eat primarily sedentary animals.
9. travail [trəˈveɪl] - (n.) - Painful or laborious effort. - Synonyms: (toil, exertion, struggle)
...because it hath not meat brought to hand, meaning it doesn't have a feed trough, but gets it by travail.
10. marbling [ˈmɑːrblɪŋ] - (n.) - The white flecks of fat in muscle tissue, especially as seen in meat, contributing to flavor and tenderness. - Synonyms: (fat distribution, flecked fat, intramuscular fat)
...the intense breeding programs of of the last few decades to create fat marbling of beef.
What Food History Tells Us About Living Longer - Toni MacAskill - TEDxBoston
So what food history tells us about living longer? If you ask someone about the diets of previous centuries, they're probably going to answer and say probably unhealthy. But if there's one thing that we have learned from history, it's that we don't always learn from history. So today I'm going to tell you about some vital things that have been lost in nutrition history. I'm Tony and I love old nutrition books. In previous centuries, they didn't even know about carbs, fat and protein. But as nutrition scientists will sometimes tell you today, the very healthiest diets are ones that were started in previous centuries, such as Mediterranean and Asian diets. And they're the basis of most countries healthy food guides today. They were all developed and refined over previous centuries.
For example, there's a widespread belief among nutrition scientists today that fermented sourdough whole grain breads from previous centuries made from heritage grains, are much better than than the supermarket bread we buy today. Some of the greatest stories ever told are about scientific advances like the making of the atomic bomb, landing on the moon. Stories about scientific breakthroughs are the stuff of blockbuster movies, bestselling novels, but they're usually about great physicists like Albert Einstein or chemists like Louis Pasteur. But what about great nutrition scientists who changed the world? We don't hear about them. For example, this is Harriet Chick. She is the first female scientist hired by the very prestigious Lister Institute in London. And Janet Lane Claypon, the second woman hired by the Institute. And they were two future giants in the field of nutrition among a sea of male scientists.
When World War I broke out, the men of Lister were deployed to the front lines and they reported back that they were struggling with beriberi and scurvy. epidemiology was coming to reveal that beriberi was not the communicative disease that they thought it was. Instead, it was a disease of nutrition. Well, Harriet decided that she needed to reformulate British rations if the men were going to be taken care of. Well, they couldn't get fruit and vegetables to the troops, but they could get lentils in peas, send them to the troops, sprout them and feed them to fend off the ravages of beriberi and scurvy. And it turned out they also helped with pellagra. Some of you probably never heard of pellagra. When nutrition scientists figured out that it was vitamins B1 and B3 that were lacking and that they could put them in a pill, they forgot about beriberi. And pellagra, and they no longer needed to eat beans, peas and the bran from whole grains to fend off those terrible diseases. So we unwittingly traded beriberi and pellagra for diabetes, because now we could get our calories from donuts and we didn't have to worry about beriberi and pellagra.
Harriet went on to also figure out about rickets, that it was both a nutritional and an environmental disease, and she helped isolate the cause. She became known as the heroine of Vienna for her work on rickets. King George VI made her Dame of the British Empire. She founded the British Nutrition Society. She gave a keynote speech there at age 99, and she lived to be age 102. We think of our obsession with diet as a phenomenon of the current century. But food historian Ken Albala has a different idea. Here's what he wrote in his book Eating Right in the Renaissance. We all know that many of us are intensely diet and health conscious. It would probably come as a surprise, though, to learn that 500 years ago, literate Europeans were equally obsessed as we are now, with eating right. Then as now, a veritable industry of experts churned out diet books for an eager and concerned public. From the 1470s to 1650, there was an immense outpouring of dietary literature from printing presses. Nutrition guides were consistent bestsellers, as they are today. They were as concerned then as we are now about the health problems coming from refined foods that were creeping into their diets.
Thomas Short famously wrote in his book published in 1728, I believe no age did ever afford more instances of corpulency than our own. He wrote a book in 1750 warning about sugar, tobacco, punch and spirits for gouty people. Thomas Waad, surgeon to the king, wrote a popular book in 1812 about corpulence as a disease, and it advocated returning to a diet that was plant rich whole foods, much like every country's health diet is today. Here's a partial list of ingredients of a recipe for salad from a circa 1300s cookbook. It uses as many wild edible plants and flowers as they could gather. There were two foundational beliefs about diet previous generations had that have been lost to history. First, when it came to animal food, they also believed in variety, just as they did for plants. They ate foxes, squirrels, rabbits, blackbirds, swans and many other species. And they ate every part of the animal that ever famous.
Thomas Moffatt, doctor in physic, wrote this book in the late 1600s about preparing the amazing variety of animals they ate. Rules comprising and Discovering the nature, method and manner of preparing all sorts of foods used in this nation. Secondly, Dr. Moffatt extolled the virtues of wild versus tame meat. In this passage. He compared wild boar and wild sow to swine raised in pens. Reason teacheth us that it is far above meaning healthier than tame pork or swine's flesh. First, because it feeds more purely, I think he meant it lives on its wild diet. Secondly, because it hath not meat brought to hand, meaning it doesn't have a feed trough, but gets it by travail and hath choice of diet to feed whereon it liveth. Thirdly, it is not penned up as commonly our swine now are. This appears to be a very common belief before the 20th century.
In 1862, Brigham Young, the pioneer who founded the territory of Utah, said, Beef fattened upon our mountain grasses is as healthy a food as we need at present. Beef so fattened is as good as wild meat and is quite different in its nature from from stall fed meat. But we can eat fish, which accepting fruit and vegetables is as healthy a food as we know and together create a very wholesome diet. But in the 20th century, wild meat became a rarity and stall fed became the norm and variety was reduced to mainly the muscle meats of beef, chicken and pork. Almost a century after Brigham Young expressed his caution about stall fed beef, scientists began studying the problem. The Washington Post reported that the Framingham Heart Study is one of the greatest advances in medicine of the 20th century, behind just antibiotics, immunization and vitamins. For 75 years, 150 scientists and technicians have traced three generations of people, measured everything about them, including their DNA.
The Director of the Framingham Heart Study noted in his book that only in the 20th century did humans come to eat primarily sedentary animals. And he warned about the health effects. What few people saw coming was the intense breeding programs of of the last few decades to create fat marbling of beef, transforming that from a high protein food to a high fat food. The wild meat of previous centuries was about 15% fat and 85% protein by calorie, according to nutrition labels. Fast food burgers today are more than 60% fat by calories. Contrast that to seafood, which, where much of it is still wild, we still eat a wide variety of it as we have for centuries. And it hasn't changed much from the wild fish of before.
As the obesity epidemic has become serious over the last 30 years, the university of Kansas developed a measure of hyper palatability of foods, meaning how hard it is for us to stop eating various foods. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that grain based foods have become many times more hyper palatable than they were just a few decades ago by combining sugar, fat, salt, artificial flavors and colors, and emulsifiers to create a smooth texture. What is surprising is that meat based dishes have almost kept pace with the grains in the hyperpalatability race based on the increasing fat content from marbling. What is even more surprising is the numbers on this graph do not indicate 50% more hyper palatable. The University of Kansas is reporting that grain dishes are 50 times more hyper palatable. This is a fruit stall from 1618. Modern fruit has become sweeter, but not to the point of becoming hyper palatable. Fruit, fish, vegetables, beans, whole grains and minimally processed nuts have remained largely as they have always been with regards to hyperpalatability, which is why traditional diets of the previous centuries that emphasize a wide variety of those foods have stood the test of time.
Now, do you think modern diets are the best? We have spent billions over the last century trying to figure out what a healthy diet is, and it turns out that most of what nutrition scientists believe today is contained in some very old books. We really needed to learn more from history. Thank you.
HISTORY, NUTRITION, EDUCATION, SCIENCE, HEALTHY DIETS, FOOD SCIENCE, TEDX TALKS