How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died (2009)

One of the paper&#x27;s authors, Dr Judith Rowbotham, is a historian, not a scientist:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.plymouth.ac.uk&#x2F;staff&#x2F;judith-rowbotham" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.plymouth.ac.uk&#x2F;staff&#x2F;judith-rowbotham</a><p>And here is the other author, Dr Paul Clayton, promoting &quot;MonaVie&quot; supplements:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=C28Bx_jbP_o" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=C28Bx_jbP_o</a><p>MonaVie turns out to be a multi-level marketing company selling food supplements (the same kind of supplements that this paper goes out of its way to recommend) that defaulted on a $152m loan in 2015 and went into foreclosure:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;MonaVie" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;MonaVie</a>

This doesn&#x27;t seem like a fair comparison because you are comparing the lifespans of a population that includes people who needed modern medical attention to survive to age 5 to another population that contained none of those people.

&gt; mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours<p>This is surprising, to say the least.

Is it possible that the high infant mortality weeded out more children from less healthy socioeconomic and genetic backgrounds than today? So on average you&#x27;d get healthier adults which would live longer? Also, I don&#x27;t like their comparison of the life expectancy of a Victorian 65-year old with a modern 5-year old. Of course the former would be relatively high.

This actually can go back to the middle ages. Obviously, middle ages longevity is by no means comparable to the 1800s, let alone now, but the people who made it past say, 30-40 did live until their 70s, even 80s. People didn&#x27;t drop dead at 35.

Infant mortality is constantly elided in order to exaggerate lifespan increases. Not to imply that infant mortality isn&#x27;t a good thing to reduce, but when you say the average person dies at 50 and there&#x27;s no concentration of people dying around 50, but instead concentrations in infancy and at the same age people die now (or later), the mean is deceptive.

They do not take into account the mass introduction of environmental contaminants following the 1880s Industrial Revolution.

Assuming this is all accurate, imagine if the Mid-Victorians had access to the vaccines, antibiotics, surgeons, and dentists that we do.

&quot;Our recent research indicates that the mid-Victorians’ good health was entirely due to their superior diet. This period was, nutritionally speaking, an island in time; one that was created and subsequently squandered by economic and political forces. This begs a series of questions. How did this brief nutritional ‘golden age’ come about? How was it lost? And could we recreate it?&quot;<p>Very interesting. My take on the rest of it shows that they ate more vegetables relative to calorific intake, and less sugar. I&#x27;m not convinced on the drinking or tobacco comments - I think these are things that are not as prevalent in my generation as much as the authors may have thought it is.

The data space around this is so complex, it is simply not possible to come to single, clear conclusions.<p>Lots of interesting questions, no answers to date:<p>1., Did the introduction of electricity and mass refrigeration amplify&#x2F;cause the deterioration of public health?<p>2., Did the massive losses of young, fit, male population in WW1 and WW2 lead to the decline of public health in the partaking nations? It stopped fine genetic material from procreating (you needed to fulfill health standards to serve after all). Losses of that scale were not encountered before.<p>etc etc.<p>Correlation, causation, the usual.

Forget the paleo diet. Someone ought to start the Victorian diet.

So we need to do two things?:<p>1. Move a lot more (twice as much). What would this entail in today&#x27;s society? Fitness?<p>2. Eat twice as much as we do now and focus on fish, fruits and vegetables?

Perhaps we have become too inactive. Perhaps only the fittest, healthiest individuals made it into adulthood and therefore the population enjoyed long, healthy lifespans. Perhaps our genomes have degraded without strong negative selective pressure against human ailments.<p>But I doubt a new diet fad will be the elixir for longevity.

The negative and dismissive comments here are enlightening. Progressivism (the religion of many of the narcissistic STEM grads on HN) would appear to in reality be a form of temporal parochialism; for this Star-Trekian religion to function, the past simply <i>has</i> to be worse than the present and future.

One issue which isn&#x27;t discussed much is so-called &#x27;mutational meltdown&#x27; from about 1800 in England whereby the (good and laudable) improvements in public health, child mortality and so forth has led to an increased burden of genetic mutations with each generation.

&gt; They had relatively little access to alcohol<p>This seems very wrong from what I know about Victorian Britain

If this is indeed true I&#x27;d imagine that most of the cause is diet based. Sugar is good for hummingbirds, not people.

what did they eat?

The article is not as focused on infant mortality as the post title suggests.<p>Am wondering about the statement regarding cancer being rare. Is that only because people didn&#x27;t live long enough?<p>I went to a Wal-Mart this past weekend, I know full well what is wrong with contemporary health--excess eating!