Diet of people in the past

Diet you look at the diet of the rich or the poor?

Up until WWI there were a lot of very malnourished people and diseases like rickets were very common. These are things that have been greatly reduced - in part by upf (bread in particular is relevant here).

I'm currently looking through a bunch of records of WWI soldiers. It's stunned me just how many were between 5 and 5'4". These are 18 year old men (yes I have been cross referencing with birth certificates - they are NOT underage - by 1918 when I'm looking this really wasn't common anymore).

I was also surprised by one of the reasons why some men were signing up. Precisely because of the food being so much better than they could otherwise have. And army rations were not known as being great.

I think it's all very well to look at historic diets but you also need to look at how typical and common they were. Even looking at 1940s and 1950s diets and the amounts that were rationed which were actually fairly balanced, the quantities were based on the men and women sizes at the time. Given both are now significantly taller they wouldn't be that suitable for a modern population on that alone (I'm not talking about weight or width just height).

Yes we all could eat better but are we trying to eat like the kings of yesterday or the ordinary people of yesterday because that in itself is important.

Ever read The Road to Wigan Pier? That might give you a different perspective on how healthy the diet of previous generations often was.

Most of the poor in early industrial England lived on adultarated bread and not much else. It wasn't always better in the past.