Does the human body really need such healthy food?

[miniwh]

As in, 5+ a day veg/some fruits etc

For thousands of years humans weren't able to access that type of varied and balanced diet

You could say we need to move with the times but other mammals are in good health by eating what's always been available to them and nothing else

So surely our bodies are designed for fairly restricted and limited diets?

But whatever we did eat back then was natural and organic.

We haven’t evolved to live off partially inverted corn syrup, or some such shite.

But they died really really young.

True!

Average lifespan during Cleopatra's rein and beyond was age 30 (and 25 considered getting on)

You are misunderstanding what the average means. There was a very high infant and child mortality, which skewed the average figure downwards. If they survived childhood, they usually lived to a reasonable old age.

Different countries have different dietary guidelines of how many you need to eat in a day and whether potatoes are counted in that number, so take the guideline with a massive pinch of salt.

In reality in bygone times if you were poor you were lucky if you had enough to eat for one meal a day let alone 3.

Unless they were married women and had children.

My body needs galaxy chocolate 😄

Is there much evidence behind the 5 a day campaign

People died young because of the absence of ABs, Vaccines and lack of heating and general medical expertise.Also any manual work was more precarious!

I wonder this too because many of the current 80 somethings grew up without any food being demonised. For some of mum's friends, the only fruit was occasional tinned peaches. Lots of bread and potatoes were a norm. Couple of veg at dinner.

I fancy a slab of galaxy now

In evolutionary terms, protein would be the hard thing to get, involving hunting or scavenging. Foraging, mainly plant and seed based, would have provided more of people’s day to day calories. There was a period about 3,000 years ago in the UK when we went from most people NOT being able to process cows milk, to the opposite, showing how vital it was during that period for calories and clean liquid.

My grandparents grew up with a lot of produce from their own gardens, and local fruit, apples, plums, blackberries. Cities may have been different.

I find it fascinating

Not quite as fascinating though as women across the globe living longer than men, on average

Our bodies may be designed for limited foods but they certainly weren't for ultraprocessed crap. I think that's the biggest issue tbh. People used to eat food which had been grown or raised rather than manufactured. If you only eat non or minimally processed foods (as everyone did prior to about 40 years ago) it's actually pretty hard not to hit five a day.

I'd like some 90s Galaxy.

I agree. 5 a day is only 400g total. In earlier times people may not have always eaten 5 different non potato fruits and vegetables in the one day as they ate seasonally. You'd eat the same vegetables and apples stored through the winter, then different fruits and vegetables in summer. Summer fruits preserved as jams in the winter. Variety over the year but maybe not in one day or week.

But they also didn't eat the highly processed crap that makes up so much of the modern western diet.

As others have said, we are not designed to eat manufactured food, only natural foods such as fish, meat, eggs, vegetables and fruit. Wheat has been so hybridized that many people can't tolerate it.
As usual on these threads I try to promote Einkorn wheat - it's an ancient grain like spelt. I make my own pasta from it. I've tried making my own bread with it too but don't like it, it's too dense.

I agree with this. I don't aim for specific numbers of veg or try to eat superfoods etc., but I do try to avoid processed foods, and as a result my diet is healthy without thinking too hard about it.

Fruit was often used in puddings, like apple and blackberry crumble or pie, stewed rhubarb and custard, gooseberry fool and so on.

I'm sure it's only in recent history that women began to outlive men in decent numbers. Previously, you would have died in childbirth or your heart would pack in at a relatively young age from the strain of lots of pregnancies and deliveries. I'm sure I also read that the mortality rate for babies improved when humans started eating porridge, it bridges the gap form weaning and stopped many babies from starving.

Humans are incredibly adaptable compared to other mammals and can survive on all sorts of food, whether those foods are good for you in the long term is a different matter.

I watched a documentary a while ago that compared the nutrients you got from eating a single, high quality steak to other foods famed for being high in said nutrients

Turned out you can live quite well on a single steak every day. And would need an awful lot of eggs, spinach and other foods to meet the same nutritional content.

The reason people died young historically was infection and fewer/no medical interventions. Not because they didn't eat 5+ fruit and veg everyday.

The best diets clean and devoid of processed crap.

Prior to the industrial revolution, most people lived in the countryside. I think that there was a lot of foraging and cottage-gardening for a wide variety of herbs, roots, leaves, and berries. I recall one of Ruth Goodman's programmes where she explained how the 'pease pudding' of the nursery rhyme was the staple: a stew of peas with whatever else could be added in season. (This was prior to the introduction of potatoes from the Americas).
So, no, I think people always ate loads of leaves etc. bulked out with bread. A very varied diet in terms of what we now call 'salad' or 'vegetables'.

As a PP said, it was protein in the form of meat that they went without, although peas/beans do have a good amount of protein. Even eggs and milk were a bit of a luxury for the poor.
After the industrial revolution, the urban poor had a shocking diet based on the cheapest carbohydrates - bread. I'm not sure how quickly the use of potatoes took off.

All I know is, we should eat less. I've started limiting my eating window to between 12-7pm. I feel loads better.