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?

This always annoys me. The amount of people who think someone walking around at 35 was essentially an elderly person in the village in the Middle Ages because average age of death is 35 is really surprising! Often people who are very clever in all other aspects but forget what averages mean for this one thing.

yes, but before UPF gained attention, there was a lot of messaging around not eating anything like carbs, red meat. On MN tinned food gives everyone a fit of the vapours. I don't know what happens if you mention lard!

Many people actually lived much longer than the 'average life span' quoted for those times. The average was massively skewed by the amount of infant mortality, death during labour, and lack of health care. Not particularly from not eating healthy food.

Please pudding is still a thing now.

Or frozen vegetables.

I saw a food history program on the BBC a couple of years ago and they were comparing the leg bones from a 5 year old born in the early 19c to one from the late 20c and the difference is density was amazing. They put the different down to nutrition.

Men burn brighter but burn out quicker. All that testosterone-fuelled muscle needs lots of energy to power it so their bodies wear out sooner.

There is an evolutionary theory that women live for a long time as they help look after grandchildren

Old age being 60 not 90 which is not at all uncommon today

Great question. I was wondering this myself and whether IBS isn't really a thing at all other than a human body rejecting stuff.ir wasn't designed for in the first place....we clearly eat a lot of crap we weren't originally ever meant to ..

As Orkas. Agree with everything said uptrend, particularly about the industrial revolution the urban poor had a male life expentency of 19 in the 1800s 😮rickets was wide spread.

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

For years we survived on fruit, veg and meat.
Anything that we could forage, grow or hunt.

So it would make sense that these natural things are better for us than food that is more processed.

There are studies that show that people from different countries metabolise food differently based on the food that is naturally local to their area.

This. ^

People regularly lived into old age but infant mortality was very high. Hence the 'average'

Love the idea of eating a steak every day. I wish I could afford that diet!

I believe the evidence suggests we should have 10 portions of fruit and veg a day but health campaigners thought this would be overwhelming and would likely result in people not bothering at all so they reduced it to 5 so its more achievable. I think food is really important, just think when you take a medicine that tiny pill can really affect your body in so many ways, so what is food doing?! It's fascinating

Pre industrialization people are much better than now. They can tell through bone analysis on skeletons.

I'll stick to the UK for simplicity.
Our ancestors ate:
Fish: our rivers and seas were bursting with herring, salmon, trout, mackerel, cod, Pollock, whiting, prawns, lobster, sole, plaice, pike, crab, mussels, eels, cockles, duck, etc
So many nutrients!

Also things we would now consider exotic like venison, guinea fowl, goose, swan, pheasant.
There werent the land restrictions so peasants could eat what they could catch.

Farm animals- beef, lamb, pork, chicken, all of much better quality than now.

Their own dairy products from their animals, even goats milk.

Eggs.

Local fruit, in season, berries, apples, pears.

Root veg- carrots and potatoes.

Other British veg. No pesticides to take away the flavour.

Then also bread and oats/ porridge.

An excellent diet!

Grains, fruits, nuts, legumes, vegetables, fish and meats. So a modified mediterranean diet may have been what humans evolved to eat. I suppose that may be why teeth are shaped the way they are.

Mortality rates were much higher due to disease and medicine has come a long way, so we live longer.

Or long enough to have other conditions!😁

I was thinking this the other day . I have phases where I'll have a few weeks where I have 7 or more fruit and veg every day , at least one with each meal . And then phases where I'm lucky if I get one or two .

Generally I'll have veg or salad with my evening meal but not always with breakfast and lunch .

I was thinking that as a child / young person this is the way I would have eaten . Possibly an additional piece of fruit as a snack but certainly not 5 + portions .

No idea; but I started eating loads more veg (approx 9-12 portions per day according to my app before was 3-5) and the difference was really something. Digestive problems went away, skin looks great, mood and PMSS so much better. It could be different for everyone but it works for me.

I think it's fine to have some chocolate etc as well btw. I'm definitely not perfect with my diet and include some crap. Just not into lots of processed food.

Young men have a habit of killing each other in wars, so that skews the results slightly.

Years ago, people ate much less and were forced to walk, run to survive. Their lifespans were so short because a simple cut could kill them, not to mention childbirth and fighting large predators for scraps.

My grandfather-in-law was a pioneer cowboy here in the (wild) west in the 1880's. He wrote that apples, or fresh veg were impossible to come by out on the range. The nearest (tiny) town was a full days horse back ride away. Without anyone to tend/guard a garden plot while he was out riding herd, they didn't bother trying to grow fruit/veg. There were no fences either back then to even protect and orchard. He said apples were worth their weight in gold.

He was born in the 1860's and died in the 1960's. My husband remembers his diet contained a lot of fatty meat and gallons of maple syrup. He never drank but always smoked a pipe. He was fit as a fiddle until he was in his early 90's due to the riding, walking and all that. In his early 90's he had a stroke but recovered.

The secret seems to be keeping thin, eating small amounts and moving your body. Not so much eating all the fruit and veg.

I really fancy some pease pudding now with some thick cut ham.😋

A lot of babies died before their 1st birthday

But if you made it to 1 you then had a good chance of making it to 5. There was a further fall off at 5 but if you progressed past 5 you then had a good chance of making it to 50. Another fall off with the 50 year olds but if you made it past 50 you then had a good chance of reaching 70.

Roughly.

I watched a documentary about people in good health over the age of 100. A lifetime of daily physical activity seemed to be the thing they had in common.