Too much food choice

[AbstractThought]

It's just a thought, so I am likely to be wrong in many ways, but would love to hear your opinion!

I wonder if we were perhaps a bit healthier when we had less choice? Before globalisation. There are the positives such as more choice for those with varied dietary requirements, etc, but maybe some down sides too?

Is it even optimal to eat fruit every day as we are advised to? At one time we would have had seasonal options and that would be it. Even a middle class child at one point was excited to find an apple and orange in their xmas stocking, so I imagine it wasn't a constant supply.
Is it realistic, environmentally, to aim to eat so many different varieties of foods every day, or even week? And then there's dental health, if we are eating various fruits per day.

Are we healthier as a culture now that there is more choice? Food availability is always a positive, but I personally ended up cutting down in the past year just to simplify my shopping and produce less waste. I didn't need 8 different veggies (including olives, capers, etc) with my pasta, and have found just a trio of broccoli, spinach and tomato is easier on my gut.

I am no expert on this, far from it, but I do find it interesting. Having so much choice has occasionally put me into a quandary, where so much focus on nutrients and variety often eclipsed the joy of eating. I feel that there's possibly a good deal of decadence involved to even enable us to get in to such a quandary!

It's not food choice is varieties of fruit that's the issue, it's processed foods that are high in calories and easy to snack on that cause most the issues. Whether I eat cabbage daily or 20 varieties of veg is irrelevant

But I wasn't focusing on which foods are healthy, more that the advice to consume so much non local and unseasonal food is unusual if we look at it historically.

Processed foods, the bad ones (I won't include butter or good bread), are obviously in huge supply, as the quality steadily decreases. This is a given.

I do think there is a heck of a lot of obsession surrounding vegetables and fruit though, and a lot of waste, environmental stuff comes with that. I suppose I am wondering about if we have lost the idea of moderation in general, even with healthier stuff.

I hope that makes sense!

I agree with you.
Even when I was a child (not the dark ages!) most evening meals were meat, potato and two veg!
Indian, Chinese, Italian food etc was 'for other people '. I ate my first Chinese/Indian food when I started working and went out with my colleagues.
Fruit was apples, bananas and oranges and once we had eaten them we had to wait for the next weeks shopping for more.
The huge amount of choice these days is quite simply overwhelming. My kids expect chef quality evening meals, an abundance of variety, fresh fruits available at all times and no repeat meals at all during the week, why wouldn't they, it's how the world has evolved!!

@@DriedFlowersLiveForever

I also think it has a lot to do with profit, if companies can find any way to make a package look 'healthier' they will. But genuinely fresh produce never gets questioned; how production in some areas is affecting wildlife, habitats, etc.
This all entered my head when I was choosing some blueberries last week, and had a choice between many countries of origin. I wondered if it was so important that I ate them out of season, or even weekly, but there's this constant messaging that we need to eat more and more of it.

In health terms, I think there's a huge push to steer people away from UPF (which is good!), but UPF seems to steal the limelight a bit.

I suppose the gov/NHS's push to create healthier eating patterns had to bypass issues of production and environment. But I do wonder if we will ever calm down a bit and come to enjoy more moderate amounts of food. I think there's a danger of over eating in general, not just over processed stuff.
Recipes for veg heavy meals often contain a stunning amount of product, and let's face it, most veg works better with oil, butter, fat, sauce, etc.

It's just something else to consume, like you say it keeps us spending money!
Very rarely do people think about food production and the damage it does globally.

Thing is though that as well as the Eat All The Vegetables message, we're also bombarded with Eat Local! Eat Seasonal!

you can't open a supermarket magazine without being told whether to eat asparagus or turnips

It's your choice to focus on blueberries instead of looking for the British label

(and it's better to eat veg with oil butter and sauce than no veg with oil butter and sauce... unless you think you'd be filling up on plain meat instead?)

Poor people used to have terrible diets. Many diets were based very heavily on potatoes and bread. Meat only occasionally. I'm very glad not to live in such circumstances.

I'm glad to be able to eat food that I like the taste of, rather than having to choke down things that have unpleasant tastes and textures to me, because I am hungry and need to survive.

Fruit wasn’t readily available, but I remember I had so much chocolates and sweets growing up, and now have dental problems. Wasn’t that great really. Too much white bread and biscuits as we we were really poor. I had rickets as a child.

Cooking oil is the problem.
Whoever made butter/lard and fat the enemy is the problem
Chemical preservatives are the problem.
Kellogg's is to blame for saying "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" to sell sugary shit.

A lot of our bad diet is as a direct result of the food and diet industry.

Potatoes saw the population of Ireland's average height increase significantly, they're a very healthy all round food (when not converted into crisps).

I sort of see your point op.
I also do wonder how many allergies/intolerances are from eating things we wouldn’t historically have been eating anyway (based on our individual genetic make ups) - no basis of knowledge, just something I’ve thought about in the past.
We do try to eat seasonally at home and try to avoid imported food as much as possible but some choice is nice and I can’t pretend that I’d be happy to live without avocados 😂

I love a good spud!

I think the (good) fibre in veg can lead to issues for some if a lot is consumed, so moderation seems to suit me best. A good balance and moderation in everything does make sense, so over consuming any one food type could potentially cause a problem somewhere. But all of our messaging now urges us to eat more and more veg and fruit without question.

I am not fond of meat, so I do love veg, but yeh.
And whilst we may have had a poorer selection of foods in the 'past', we had higher quality if one could afford it at least. I don't buy bacon or sliced chicken/turkey any more because even the higher priced choices are appalling. Quality has decreased across the board, especially with meat, and a lot of our veg in local supermarkets is dreadful.

My favourite sweetheart cabbage has turned to dry rubber over the past 12 months, no matter where I buy it. In an effort to disguise the cost of production, everything is going to hell.
My last packet of bacon 6 months ago was as thin as serrano ham. Why bother??

We all like a bargain, but to my mind, the effort to decrease costs has destroyed much of what I used to love, both with meat and fruit & veg.

To clarify, I love that we have choices, especially for vegetarians, vegans and different cultural tastes, but the sheer glut of 'stuff' is overwhelming, unnecessary and potentially environmentally destructive.