Evolution of the Western Diet: A Nation With Pervasive Eating Problems

Is your diet killing you? All American’s should be asking themselves this question, and we should be scrutinizing everything we put on our plates because for the first time since 1993 the life expectancy for Americans has dropped according to the National Center for Health Statistics, and it seems that all signs point to the evolution of the Western diet.

A Diet History Lesson

As we all know, technology advances at head-spinning rates. You think you are caught up on technology, and then it changes again. As a population, we have made amazing advances in just the past 100 years.  If you have a great grandparent in their 90s, think of all the things they have seen come to fruition.

These advances are found everywhere, even in agriculture. How else would we feed the approximately 319 million people in the United States? Technology of course. However, with technology comes mass production of food and processed foods. Think of all the products you can buy at your grocery store. The products are limitless.

Can you imagine what a grocery store or food market looked like just 100 years ago? Fruits and vegetables were only seasonally available. Almost all fruit was available only in spring and summer months, and warm weather and cold weather vegetables were grown at appropriate times. People ate foods prepared through recipes from their grandmothers, and all recipes were derived from raw foods, herbs, and spices.

There was not a way to calculate macronutrients or read a food label for nutrition information because it was a non-issue. There were no sugar substitutes or Hamburger Helper packs to thrown in with a pound of beef, and Blue Bell was a young company, so that wasn’t in the grocery cart every week. It was a rarity and a special treat not enjoyed very often.

Where Did Things Start Going Wrong?

Timeline of Food Problems:

1950s – The fast food industry began booming. Hello easy meals.

1960s - High fructose corn syrup was introduced. It was cheaper than sugar, and it was used in mass to produce processed foods. Thankfully, now we are seeing many companies leaving high fructose corn syrup behind. Every small shift that consumers demand is going to be helpful for future generations.

1980s – TV dinners became a replacement for home cooked meals as family lives changed and became “busier” for households with two working parents. Good bye home cooking, and hello to the amazing invention, the microwave, and microwaveable meals.

1990s – Do you remember the commercial that said, “I just wanna eat the bread?” It was a Mrs. Baird’s famous commercial. Now we know that we shouldn’t be eating the white bread, but kids from the 90s sure filled up on it.

This food time line could go on and on, but truly flour and sugar cravings are the devils of diet. They have been the biggest contributors to the demise of our current diets.

Weight Gain On The Rise: A Sad Outlook For Our Upcoming Adults

What it all boils down to is that Americans are making “easy” choices.

The USDA (2010) states, “Americans choose foods that are not in nutrient-dense forms. These foods provide additional, empty calories compared to a nutrient-dense version of the same food. The extra calories from added fats and sugars, or refined grains (breading) are from about one-quarter to more than half of the total calories in the food product.”

What’s even more shocking…

In a report by Cordain et al. (2005), they found that “Dairy products, cereals, refined sugars, refined vegetable oils, and alcohol make up 72.1% of the total daily energy consumed by all people in the United States.” We simply can’t expect our bodies to thrive off of these types of foods.

When we think about our ancestors, we know that little to none of these foods were staples in their diets because these choices simply weren’t available. Rapid evolutionary dietary changes allow us to make poor choices every day and making poor food choices will continue to shorten our lives unless the people of this nation begin to make better choices for themselves and their families.

Healthy has to be a habit.

Though many advances in food technology have helped us to have a more complete diet year round, these rapid evolutionary dietary changes have also contributed to a gluttonous society with serious, nation-wide food issues to resolve.

What Rapid Diet Change Has Caused

Our bodies were not built to live off of the processed, refined foods that are easily accessible in mass to us today. Our bodies simply have not adapted to this type of eating. Diets high in these readily available, quick, and empty calorie foods are leading to serious health issues.  According to the CDC (2015) the leading causes of death in 2015 were heart disease and cancer.  These two chronic illnesses can be directly linked to the way we fuel our bodies.

Chronic illnesses are still on the rise due to eating habits. Heart disease and cancer, the top two killers, are taking lives and not just in the elderly, but in middle-aged Americans.

Next, take a long look at our youth.

These statistics from the Center for Disease Control (2015) are staggering:

• Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years (CDC, 2015).
• The percentage of children aged 6-11 in the US who were obese increased from 7% in 1980 to nearly 18% in 2012 and the percentage of adolescents aged 12-19 years increased 5% to nearly 21% over the same period (CDC, 2015).
• In 2012, more than one third of children and adolescents were overweight or obese (CDC, 2015).

If that was 2012, and I have seen no changes for the better over the past 5 years, what will today’s youth look like as adults? The outlook is not good. They are living out what may be the worst part of the obesity epidemic due to the fact that they were born into the poor eating lifestyle provided by their parents. Their health will suffer as a result. We have to reverse how we think about food or else life expectancy for American’s will continue to drop. We will actually kill ourselves with food.

Today too many people think of food as a comfort, for celebration, and people indulge unnecessarily every day.

Eating Healthy Is Odd??

I have noticed that people who eat healthfully are looked at as “odd,” or people say, “I don’t know how you eat that.” It actually seems abnormal for people to eat healthy meals. I can’t even tell you all of the ridiculous comments that I heard when I was bodybuilding and eating clean all day every day. People would even try to taunt me with junk food they brought to eat. Sometimes it was humor; sometimes I think it was to test my willpower.

There is a problem when society does not take eating healthfully seriously. Healthy eating should be normalized again. Food is fuel for your body. Period!

Conclusion

Bottom line: Stop choosing convenience over your own health!

Longevity is important in everyone’s life. We want to raise a family, watch our grandchildren grow and prosper in health, and it’s all possible by taking care of one simple thing – your diet. There is no magic diet plan.

It’s really quite simple. Eat unprocessed foods, which means shopping on the external aisles of your local grocery store. Eat foods grown from Mother Earth. Leave pre-packaged foods on the shelves, and limit fast food. Take the time to prepare healthful, naturally delicious meals from home. Use portion control. Your body will look and function better than ever, and you won’t have to worry about death coming early for you due to your diet.

Let’s change the life expectancy trend and get it moving back in the right direction!