Was THIS The BEST Diet EVER?
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- Опубліковано 14 тра 2024
- Did we discover a lost era of nutrition, where people were healthier than we are today?
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Life in Mid-Victorian England was everything but healthy. Pollution, deadly disease, a lack of sewage - nothing healthy about it. Still, research says that the diet and lifestyle of the mid-Victorian working class might have been the healthiest that has EVER existed, for ANY modern state.
These are bold claims that we can't verify - but there is a lot to learn from this "golden era' of nutrition. How does it compare to our diet and lifestyle today?
Let's find out!
Timestamps:
0:00 - A Lost Golden Age of Nutrition?
2:33 - Life In The "Golden Age" Of Health
6:06 - Death & Diseases
8:45 - Is this Even Possible?
9:38 - The Working Class Lifestyle
11:32 - The Mid-Victorian Diet
15:53 - More Benefits of the Victorian-Era Diet
18:53 - The Golden Era of Nutrition Ends
Here are the papers for further reading:
How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died
www.researchgate.net/publicat...
An Unsuitable and Degraded Diet?
Part One: Public Health Lessons from the mid-Victorian Working Class Diet
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
(Parts Two & Three can be found easily through Part One)
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I don't write a lot of comments. And I mostly give my opinion on something when I do. But when it comes to you...I don't even remember how I ended up on your channel, but all I can say is that I adore you. For your honesty, research, down-to-earth mindset, and commitment. You have such a soothing voice and a calm/ pleasant demeanor. Like, no matter what you wish to talk about, I am in. Thank you for making videos. And I wish you nothing but the best.
i think the nutrients were less important than the fact that people 100+ years ago were very active, and people today are very much not. someone today who is very active and eats decently well is in better health than anyone from previous centuries. not to forget, that we have nutrient and protein supplements today.
Please take a break if you need to ❤️
I had a roomie who studied nutrition and was convinced it was actually our lack of bugs in food that causes zinc and other trace mineral deficiencies.
Not even purposefully eating bugs, but before pesticides we'd have more bugs and their eggs in our grains that would get ground up into our bread and beer. Most people would not have the time or luxury to pick them all out or throw away whole batches of grain. Or vegetables cooked up and thrown in stews, soups and pies (most veggie consumption was cooked) wouldn't have been so carefully washed because as you pointed out, there was not much good water.
Many trace minerals we lack or are hard to find are easily found in bugs, or in sea bugs- aka shellfish and seafood.
They were healthy because of the meat and fat. That is the healthy part. Not the veggies and fruits, those are not healthy. I know you put the picture of broccoli because you think that's healthy food but you've been misled.
3 Kiana videos within 2 weeks?!? What a time to be alive!👏
hahaha😂
Fr they’re great
these videos are researched and we'll produced .. how do you do this is it scripted or just edited seamless?
I AGREEEEEE❤
Exactly what I thought 😂
Wow! If only there were a way to replicate the mid-Victorian Era food environment in which the cheapest and most widely available foods were the healthiest ones.
@@newtunesforoldlogos4817not to mention teaching people how to forage and grow produce and mushroom. Implement infrastructure that encourages us to grow and forage food again
I think it's starting to happen. More people are trying to incorporate more home made food in their lives.
@@newtunesforoldlogos4817 I agree. Whole foods are they way to go. And there should only be subsidies for whole foods that are eaten by people and not by crops for animal feed.
80% of the global population lives in cities. Not much space to grow your own food.
@@CordeliaWagner you’d be shocked at what you can get out of a window sill or a small indoor setup with a grow light. Even teaching/facilitating people how to grow some greens, sprouts or mushrooms indoors could vastly increase the number of people who the have access to those foods.
One thing I, as a historian think this study didn’t take into account is that it is not really possible to compare rates of chronic disease (obesity, diabetes and heart disease in particular) because the vast majority of people were not routinely seeing doctors so the robust statistics we have of these things today did not exist. For example the vast majority of mid Victorians had no way to track their weight so any kind of comparisons regarding rates of overweight and obesity really aren’t possible
Visually, we see too many obese people nowadays. Not rocket science 😂😊
You can, however, check lots of other data. Clothing for example. Where there is no need for 27xl clothes, there usually aren't too many 600 pounders. Also general food availability. 5000+ calories a day likely wouldn't have been affordable.
A vague term like "health" is much harder to define though. But ultimately they lived off of seasonal chemical free farming and were reasonably active. That's what the human body is made for.
@@justine3769 you misunderstand, I am not saying that our current data that we have dangerously high levels of obesity is incorrect, what I am saying is we cannot make a strong comparison between obesity rates today and in the mid Victorian era. What we have very strong data for is the last 50-80 years of increasing obesity and chronic metabolic disease.
@@rebel4466 correct, though we actually don’t have great data for clothing because of biases in what survived. The clothing we have in archives tends to be the clothing of wealthy young women, and these tend towards pretty small sizes. Bigger clothing as well as the clothes of the working class and men and children in general tended to be cut down and reused. Bigger dresses could make smaller dresses, children’s clothing, or men’s shirts, while smaller clothing couldn’t be used for as many things. Photography of Victorian cities is also helpful, we tend to see mostly people who would today be categorized in the healthy or overweight bmi categories and very very few people who were very very large. Evidence from analysis of extant garments and sewing manuals suggests that anything from a corseted 18-37” waist would have been seen as fairly typical for adult women. Remember 1850-1880 is before ready made clothing was common, so there were no standardized sizes. The ideal figure was not a specific size but rather a ratio, with the bust being about ten inches larger than the waist and the hips being about 10-15” larger than the waist, this was created with a combination of corsetry and padding.
A much higher child mortality rate would reduce dysgenic people as well
Not me sitting down to eat lunch and Kiana tells me about sewage for 5 minutes 😅
omg same haha
I was eating dinner
Me too haha😅
I vaguely remember rich people "inventing" exercise as a hobby because they got so sick from doing nothing all day. They saw the working class do so much physical exertion and looking healthier and then copied them, but more fun haha
I mean, alot of people do get enjoyment from exercising. If you take away all modern conveniences and give someone the equivalent of a dull desk job, going out for a jog seems like a pretty welcome distraction.
I don't know why, but your comment made me think of golf. Not a particularly demanding sport. :) But yeah, they had and have various sports and activities... that are nowhere nearly as hard as working 10-12 in a plant.
No, the health benefits of exercise have pretty much always been well known. Contemporary beauty books included advice about brisk walks, stretches, and cold baths to improve circulation and maintain robust health, and sports like tennis, skating, and archery were popular among the middle class as well as the wealthy (archery was often considered a suitable form of exercise for ladies centuries prior to the Victorian era). Stuff like gymnastics and weights were definitely not popularized until well into the 20th century for obvious reasons, but the Victorians weren’t living in the dark ages, and they had common sense about certain things to do even if they didn’t understand why.
@@cherry-insomnia9188yeah sure, that's why they told new mothers to stay indoors and do as little as possible to fight that postpartum depression 😂
Exercise has always been seen as a good idea what are you talking about?
We mustn't forget the crucial importance of physical exercise for our health. There's a reason we possess incredible endurance - we can run for days if necessary. In the past, hunter-gatherer tribes engaged in extreme amounts of physical activity compared to the modern era, where many of us, myself included, sit and watch videos.
Humans have 1 advantage (other than intelligence) over all other species: endurance. We would historically hunt animals by simply chasing them until they died of exhaustion. We’re extremely good at dissipating heat via sweat and being bipedal means we’re energy-efficient at movement. High amounts of physical activity is extremely healthy for you.
Yeah, I heard someone say once that aging is a sitting disease
endurance is a myth. how many people can actually run a marathon? yeah, you probably dont even know of any
im extremely fit myself: i lift weights and do heavy cardio x5 a week. and no, i dont do weak sauce "exercise" that most people do when they go to the gym. and yet despite being more fit than 90% of people my endurance is not that great. endurance is a myth
@@Blox117not untrained of course, but if you build up your endurance most people have the capacity to run a marathon. You just need to train for it, which is what hunter-gatherers basically would have done by being very active from childhood on. It's not a myth, it's just not compatible with modern lifestyle for most people.
I’m working on losing weight, and overall just getting healthier physically as well as mentally. Your channel has helped me so much! Thank you!!
Same I hope it goes well
I can say the same! Good luck on your journey!
I am, too! Best of luck to you all! ❤
@@Cinnie.Stories Thanks
I wish I was you, I can't seem to stick to a diet, I'm currently binging while watching this. I hate myself, I didn't ask to be here and I'm annoyed.
My family lived to old age in mid Victorian England because they lived in the countryside. London is not typical of England. It’s always been like it’s own place. I was raised on a similar diet here in the countryside with veg and offal until my teens when I was lured in by cheese strings and Sunny D. In the country you could grow veg and there are lots of hedge greens (hawthorn, dandelion etc) nuts, berries and fruits. So I do believe mid Victorians were pretty robust- if they weren’t in the Cities. Children playing outdoors- roaming for miles or walking miles to schools eating herbs etc during the day. My dad has been sick for 2 days in his entire life. Gran is 96. Born and raised in the village. My dad and his family were very poor and housing was shocking but living here they could fish and catch birds and rabbits to eat. They had chickens and grew veg. Watercress grows in local streams. We have natural springs here. So outside of cities people weren’t crammed together or surrounded by dirty water or the problem London had with dead bodies tainting local water pumps. We weren’t surrounded by night soil and needing to wear pattens on our feet.
Since i cut out most processed foods, im rarely sick and even when i am its usually for half the time of other people.
Genuine question, any tips for eating offal? Its hard for me to stomach
@@dismurrart6648 how did you start to cut out processed foods? wich food did you cut out first to make transition. I want to eat healthy but maybe not ready yet. So addicted to chips/crisp and all thing not healthy.
@viola3022 I started by thinking "do I even enjoy this thing?"
So like muffins. They don't make me happy, I don't even really care for them. Why the heck was I eating one every morning?
I didn't start by just removing it. I replaced it with something I liked better like a donut.
I did it one food at a time like this. Then after getting used to that, I started cutting back on the stuff I do like. So maybe I was eating 2 candy bars, a donut, and a brownie or whatever a day(yes I was doing this) well, what if I make a delicious cake and divide it into 7 slices for the week? I found I didn't want the 4 okay things because I had 1 delicious thing at home waiting for me.
The other thing I still do with foods I have trouble controlling is either I don't have them in the house, or I pre portion them out and put them on the top shelf.
Oh, one last thing, don't try to go all in on removing everything. Every change I made I did a step that I felt I could do forever and I did only that for 3-4 weeks. Not everything was removing either. Some of my goals were things like "eat a vegetable with breakfast." By the end of a year, I had significantly improved my diet and that year of time it took to get to a decrease meant I've stuck by it through even the worst days. Anytime I tried to change everything at once, I ended up finding I missed the comfort I got from my junk foods.
@@viola3022 I cut out most processed food a couple of years ago. Lost 50 pounds and felt younger (53 now). I would say find whole foods that you enjoy. I love bacon and eggs. Chia pudding is great with berries, I use frozen berries and it will all freeze so you can make for the week and pull out as you need it. Steak is delicious. You can make French fries in the air fryer with coconut oil, or the left over bacon grease, but it takes time so it’s a rare treat. In addicted to chocolate so I have hot water with some cocoa powder and stevia, but that won’t work for all, just find what works for you. I suggest going in all at once because how you look and feel will encourage you!
Exactly. My gran loved brain and heart with tatties. She was born in 1920 and although sweets eventually got the better of her teeth, much of her early diet was similar to this "perfect" mid-Victorian diet. Poverty was the limiting factor with cheaper foods being less healthy, also the war changed eating patterns greatly.
Fun (or very unfun) fact: the most common cause of death for people above the age of one in Victorian England was tuberculosis. Today, tuberculosis is still the deadliest infectious disease. Unlike during Victorian England, however, TB is completely treatable now. This is also what made the pail, thin, large eye-ed aesthetic so popular. TB was scene as a romantic, beautiful, way that artists died.
I had John Greens voice in my head at that part going, it always was tuberculosis lol
@@hanab3758Yes! I thought to myself about his quote in one of his recent shorts I saw, "Everything revolves around tuberculosis, and tuberculosis revolves around everything."
Yes! It was known as "consumption" in medical terms as it would slowly consume you. In literature it was known as "white death" as it was considered pure, romantic and sad. It is still endemic across many parts of the world, including London where it is still common among the homeless population unfortunately (due to their living conditions and other factors)
@@dangsood4945why is it endemic when there are readily available vaccines in non-third world countries? 5hats a genuine question
@SarahSkinnyJeans because even though there may be vaccines, that doesn't mean that people are able to access them or afford them. Countries like Eastern Europe and Pakistan (Historically poor places with bad health care, low health literacy etc) are still struggling with the disease.
Also, TB is slightly different in the way it presents. It can lie dormant in the lungs for years and years, so many people who are carriers of it don't realise. Then when their bodies are weakened from something else (like another illness, injury, age, poor nutrition etc) it can spring up with a vengeance.
One of my schoolfriends father had TB. He'd been homeless in his youth and had contracted it then (the first time people get it it often just feels like a cold and then goes dormant, so people don't even realise). Then when he got older and caught a flu, it triggered the TB to come back full force and he nearly died.
This is in London btw. He developed TB in 2014.
When she said, "Meanwhile, in the modern world" at 11:22, yt broke into a commercial for Burger King. I am not joking.
I think the high phisical activity is a super important part. For people with sedentary jobs with long hours it may be too difficult or even impossible to adapt a diet like that, needing a different approach. Still, very interesting video and a lot of... Food for thought! Yeah, not apologizing for that one 😂
hahaha
Besides the physical activity, food was just way harder to come by at the time, and everyone but the wealthy lived on the brink of malnourishment, especially in the Winter months.
This honestly gave me motivation to cook more and tend to my garden better.
I'll probably watch this video a few more times and take notes lol
I'd say in addition to the Mediterranean style diet, and plenty of exercise their gut health was also likely pretty good considering all that fiber they were getting. Plus the fact that everything was so dirty meant they were getting exposed to plenty of microbes as well. Only a small percentage of microbes are actually dangerous pathogens. The vast majority of microbes we encounter are either benign or actually beneficial to our health. So when their diet went to shit thanks to high amounts of sugar and highly processed food their gut health nosedived as well.
Go sleep in the mud, then.
@@jasonhaven7170 Actually putting your hands in dirt may be beneficial! Ideally it should be while you're doing a bit of gardening. Do you have a pet? You can also get plenty of microbes that way too. Or perhaps even through human contact.
Nowadays there are also lots of things we are exposed to that didn’t exist or were not as widespread at that time, such as microplastics, antibiotic injected livestock, livestock with added growth hormones, pfas, bpas and many more. Fruits have became sweeter due to careful selection and breeding.
@@Me-hm6fv True! But thanks to anti-biotics we are also no longer exposed to numerous strains of beneficial microbes because they've been wiped out due to hyper sanitization. Basically we've gone a little over board on the hand sanitizer and antibiotics, and now our gut health is worse than it used to be because of it. So one reason Victorian health plummeted was due to far less consumption of the pre biotic fiber from all them veggies that got replaced by sugary treats. Fun fact: when you don't feed the microbes in your gut they start to eat the protective mucus lining within your gut cuz the little guys gotta eat something and they sure don't want twinkies or taco bell. Without that mucus lining you're far more vulnerable to disease, and auto immune gut diseases in particular.
Kiana, I’m a public nutrition health researcher (almost 😅 about to publish my first paper with nutritionists from the department of health in Victoria, Australia as coauthors and under the auspices of WHO global centre for obesity research) which might interest you - and I’m about to start my phd scholarship. I have a Bachelor in nutrition and exercise science, AND a Bachelor of psychology. But more so, what lead me to nutrition was a series of issues I encountered with the capacity of dietitians (and hospitals) to prescribe food and develop meals with precise micronutrients and minimal energy (because obesity is the issue of our times). All that to say that I wonder if you’d be interested in collaborating on a very relevant project. I’m very interested in behaviour change and believe that a focus on micronutrient intake might be very helpful for many people (for lots of reasons I’d love to pick your brain on). You’re a fantastic science communicator - something I have yet to develop. I’m not sure how to use UA-cam private messaging but I’m going to figure it out.
That sounds fascinating!!! I would love to read or watch something like that!
Bad news helene, yt private messaging has been removed half a decade ago
😅 haha, thanks - I’m old.
Nah, dont say that
You just needed some info
@@ChicDead26 still greatly missed feature, even if it was abused. Having UA-cam friends without needing to refer to a Twitter page etc. was nice.
Please I beg you to make longer videos ! I love watching your videos but wish they were longer, I understand it depends on the topics and it'd take more to edit, but I just love watching your videos !
I have an hour long video series coming!! Probably not until early fall though! (Hopefully September)
@@KianaDochertyso exciting! Love your videos.
There’s a series where modern families “time travel” to live in the Victorian era and learn about what life was like for different classes of people.
That series is complete crap though. You can’t just drop someone into a certain lifestyle and claim to have truly experienced it. Routine and upbringing have a significant impact on lifestyle choices and life skills
@@abidizzne892the series is Back in Time for... and that's not the claim the series. Sure the people get a taste of what it was like to live in a different time, but its mainly educational how people lived. I think its a great show.
@@abidizzne892 this is why I way prefer the Victorian Farm series, the three people who live and work the farm are historians and archaeologists and have expertise in these living and working practices so they are very successful.
@@TheQueerTailor I love those series they have several more too from different times too.
i was just thinking about that! even if you cant get a full grasp of the experience by doing that, it does definitely put certain aspects of it into perspective
No vegetable oil. They used lard. My grandma cooked in lard and died just shy of a hundred. That video was an eye opener. Nobody ever seems down on eating vegetables. All those communicable diseases and yet they lived a long time. Amazing.
Exactly
Yep! They cooked with lard, tallow/beef dripping and butter.
Swaped on my grandmas lard 5 years ago. My cholesterol levels are perfect and i'm using lard and butter in everything.
Never had a problem and lost weight. But yea nowadays offal and off cuts is so expensive due to demand because surprise- people woke up.
@@sweetycamy Really? Here they're expensive because no one wants them. Butchers have to go out of their way to get them for you.
Not even pig lard. Beef tarrow. I cook everything in beef tarrow or olive oil now. I even cook my eggs with olive oil and they're fluffier than ever.
Ive sent my husband some of your videos before and he never watched them but then the other day i found him watching your video on fast food addiction on his own and he acted like he just discovered you on his own haha
Why do men do that? They act like they would die if they ever had to give a woman credit for anything
@@alexavasquez1992 I think he is just crazy forgetful but definitely reveals he doesn't pay attention to what I send haha
People from the mid-victorian era were just built different i guess 😅 lol but seriously i think the researchers were kind of spot on. My Grandmother use to say you can survive as long as you have potatoes. She grew up extremely poor. She use to tell me bologna was honestly a treat they'd have like, once every so often. And my uncle from that side of the family was by far one of the most athletic guys i ever heard of, even though he himself isn't really a tall man. He can humbly boast that he only ever got sore once in his life and that was in at an elderly age. I believe if it wasnt for their bad habits that came with the modernity of mass producing consumption they would have a lived alot longer. But the video does make you think. Just because a crop yeilds more for harvest doesnt mean it necessarily yields more nutrients. Interesting video, I like and agree with the the things you pointed out and now Im going to take a shower, just because.
100% My Mum grew up on a farm and she calls the food we get in supermarkets these days "plastic". We had a vege garden and fruit trees throughout my childhood and you can taste the difference. Particularly, crops get picked before they are ripe and then artificially ripened directly prior to sale. So there is already less time for the plant to absorb soil nutrients, assuming the nutrients are there to begin with.
@@goaway6339 hmph. That's pretty cool I didnt know that. Thanks for sharing. I was thinking about getting into gardening and bee keeping. It'd be nice to learn how to do all that jazz
@@IllucinateXx I imagine all that exposure to nature is good for health in lots of ways. One day if I ever own my own home I'd like to have at least a small garden myself. Gotta keep on top of the pests though, one time we discovered caterpillars in the broccoli half way through dinner lol Mum was just like "harden up"
@@goaway6339 lol. That's actually pretty funny, your mom sounds like quite the character. Theres this old abandoned house behind mine. It use to belong to my brother but it's pretty run down now. I really want to turn into a large self sustainable garden. It'd be one helluva project but it would also be pretty neat to see it come into fruition
@@IllucinateXx That's awesome! Go for it! Just start small :-) Plant a couple of trees if that's what you want in the future, it'll take a while for them to age up enough to fruit. Then beans and peas and tomatoes pretty much take care of themselves without even digging in beds or anything. Then go from there.
Allow me to highly recommend growing your own grapes, the quality is night and day. The birds unfortunately agree.
The study sounds like an example of survivorship bias. Only the strong survived early childhood, and therefore were more likely to live a long life. If you took the same population and they had the medical advances and sanitation we have today that allow for lower infant mortality and child death, it’s hard to know if they would cane lived as long on average, as more of the “weak” would have survived early childhood.
You're right, Kianna, this study has many interesting implications. You didn't even touch on the amount of pickled and fermented foods they would have eaten as that was a preservation method tha would have been necessary with no refrigeration. Also the high amount of salt yhat would have been used to preserve meat! I would totally watch a reality show where they reproduced lifestyle conditions of working class and upper class people of that age and documented health and body changes.
Not surprising, it isn’t just modern diets that are causing this period to be so unhealthly, but also our lifestyles. We've chosen comfort and ease over hard work (totally understandable), but that comes with a price.
A quick calculation brings my daily fruit and veg to 8 a day, so not as good as the Victorians. I also wirk a very physical job, lifting lumber for 8 hours a day. I have seen the fat drop off my body and feel very fit and healthy.
I majored in history and had to spend a fair amount of time researching this. The truth is that it was mostly the very wealthy that lived long. Some peasants lived long lives but it wasn't as common as it is now. A lot of people would make it to their late 50s early 60s. But the truth is that the elderly are much better off these days. We have retirement homes full of people 70/80+ years old. Today, we DO live longer, but mostly because we have the technology to keep people alive. People stayed healthy longer a couple hundred years ago because of their physical lives and non processed diet. So today we have 50 year olds that haven't moved or eaten real food in decades, making them extremely unhealthy. Compared to a 50 year old hundreds of years ago, the latter would appear much healthier. At the same time, if an obese 70 year old today gets sick, we know how to treat it. Back then, simple illnesses would kill you before you even made it that long because no one knew how to treat it.
I'm not even sure that's accurate, though. The numbers might look healthier, but they didn't keep track of the illness numbers that we do today. And uh...I'm pretty sure I wouldn't look at a lot of the people from the working class in Victorian England and think they seemed particularly healthy. Not when a pretty sizable fraction of them bore various physical scars from working in the factories, some since they were teens. There's way more to health than weight.
@@Nixeu42 You're not totally wrong, they definitely weren't the pinnacle of health. They had their own set of health issues that we don't have to worry about. But they also didn't eat any of our weird processed modern food and they moved every day. I didn't say anything about weight in my previous comment, idk why you even mentioned that. Projecting, probably. A 50 year old that spent their whole adult life working in an office, going home, and watching TV, is going to be significantly less healthy that a fifty year old that survived their whole life without ANY of our modern conveniences
@@mrdavisdance The weight thing was mostly an extrapolation from "50 years old and hasn't moved or eaten real food in years". I can't think of a lot of other serious health issues from that combination than obesity. Or I guess maybe scurvy/beri-beri? But those tend to be pretty rare even on a tertiary-processed food diet. Including some vitamin C and A when manufacturing your products isn't hard.
Also, try not to be so absolute in your statements. Makes them really easy to pick apart. A 50-year old coal miner from the Victorian era dying of black lung is not more healthy than a fairly average modern office worker. It depends on how broadly you define "modern conveniences", what areas of health you're looking at, who you're talking about from the Victorian era. If "health care" and is a "modern convenience", then I'd very much question their health regardless. Same with "PPE" and "hazardous work environment regulation". Or "water purification", for that matter.
Honestly, I'm partially pushing back because I find the tendency to idealize the past, for whatever reason. These things are typically a trade-off. Kiana does, I know, go into some of the issue in Victorian England, but it's hard to grasp, in this day and age, just how fucked it could really be. It's a time period where some of the health issues of pre-industrial life still remained issues, and also had lots of new ones were being introduced from the Industrial Revolution.
Also, I've looked more into it. And apparently, that "healthy diet" wasn't so healthy or unmodified as you think. Food dying and adulteration was just starting to be a real thing in the Victorian era. Urban populations wanted cheap food, and adulteration was one way to get it. One popular trick was dying food to hide any alterations. And there was fuck all regulation, so your cheese could easily contain red lead and mercury sulfide, or your tea copper arsenate (also a potential concern in vegetables) or ferrocyanide. So, uh...yeah, I'm really wondering about those life expectancy numbers. Best guess, they cherry-picked their population.
@@Nixeu42 You're pushing back because you really want to be right, then you realized you didn't have a valid point, and now you're scrambling and trying to figure out how to sound less stupid. I obviously wasn't talking in absolutes. Again, your reading comprehension really isn't helping you here. And there is a TON of health issues that arise from not moving and eating nothing but processed food. I don't care what your weight is, if you have a sedentary lifestyle and eat nothing but processed food, you're extremely unhealthy. This has been proven over and over again. I'm not idealizing the past, I'm looking at it objectively. We have a different slew of health issues today than we did back then, that doesn't mean that humans were the pinnacle of health din the past. It means that on average, they had certain habits in their diet and lifestyle that kept them active for longer in life. They also, on average, had certain diet and lifestyle habits that we no longer participate in that made them die sooner (not knowing what protein really is, not having access to enough food, not having any real medical knowledge, not understanding germs). That's how you study history, you look at it objectively. It's lazy and boring to say "Humans were better or worse in this time period" because history, much like all humans, is more gray than it is black and white.
I heard a great quote the other day where someone said, "The vast majority of people nowadays aren't living longer, they're DYING longer."
Being put in a nursing home for ten or twenty years at the end of one's life isn't really a marker of health, it's simply a marker of how long we can stave off death.
It’s funny that I’ve always heard that now we live longer than ever, but whenever I see information about some people from the past and I notice their birth and death dates, I see that they lived for a long time (like 70 or 80 years), so I started to question this long time we live today. This video was very clarifying on this subject.
I learned about the infant mortality skewing that statistic over a decade ago, but for some reason a lot of people still use it misleadingly, such as, "at least we won't die at 30 like they did in the caveman days!" or something like that.
"they were not starved, but had been consuming the wrong foods."
Modern day me put on absolute blast unbelievable 😔😔😔
As a history student also currently working on the topic of the working class (just not their diet tho) watching this was incredably heartwarming. Actually, your whole content is and it helped me realize how some of my coping mechanisms work - thank you for your work and keep flourishing!
love that you used the word "flourishing". I love that word! And thank you!
I do historical re-enacting and if you read about the incredible variety of foods people ate it's astounding. Seafood was cheap ( and looked down on for a lot of history), though there was a big oyster craze, I think in the later part of the 19th century.
I remember reading that you used to be able to get all your nutritional needs met by consuming potatoes and dairy but now that is not true. I also think that people had an easier time getting cheap organ meats ( I don't remember the last time I saw kidney or heart at the grocery store) and the cheapest food is now the least nutritious.
I lived for many years in Latin America, I walked everywhere, shopped often, and carried my groceries home. Now, I drive to the grocery store, stock up and maybe shop every 2 weeks.
I'm glad Kiana mentioned that potatoes were a very nutrient-dense staple, because potatoes really can be a superfood. If they are bred and grown for mass production, maybe not so much. By the time they're ultraprocessed into fast food french fries or a bag of chips, they're purely detrimental to human health. But small batch grown potatoes, recently out of the ground and oven roasted in tallow... people can get by pretty well on those.
I actually have a small grocery store near me that does sell some "undesirable" meats on occasion, and it's always so much cheaper than the muscle meats. I've yet to se and kidneys I think, but livers, chicken feet, pig knuckles, and even heart are sold there!
@@victorycallthey lack essential aminos and fats, tho
@@LtdJorge re: aminos, a "staple" food doesn't mean it's the only food in the diet; and re: fats, that's why roasting them in tallow is one great way to prepare them.
@@acorneroftheinternet4179check ethnic grocery stores especially Spanish and African that is usually where I find goat, beef shins, tongue etc.
I've been watching Kiana's videos since the covid lockdown three years ago and this is my favorite video she's ever posted. Last week I read this book called "In Defense of Food" by Michael Pollan and it really resonated with me. I think what Kiana pointed out near the end is what we should all be focusing on, eating more of the right things instead of trying to keep our calories low by cutting as much as possible. I'm guilty of thinking that only eating one slice of pizza is better than eating two slices with a large salad of fruits and vegetables, I don't think that way anymore thankfully.
I eat a lot of fruit and vegetables but rarely ever go to a farmer's market, it's probably best to buy as locally and seasonally as possible. There must be a good reason for why something grows at a certain time, and instead of fighting nature maybe we should just work with it while being good to ourselves in the process
That's a very individualistic view though. Healthy food is hard to obtain for most people. Food deserts. Lack of drinkable water. Rich countries polluting the grounds and waters in poor countries they exploit. What we should be focusing on is ending capitalism
For many people it's that slice of pizza or nothing. There's no other option
@@hypatiakovalevskayasklodow9195 ok but capitalism and the processed food industry are hand in hand. Processed food factories are some of the main sources of polluting water in the 3rd world and fast food companies have more money than grocery stores and will purposefully buy excess spots in food deserts that could have been a grocery. You can't use other people's unfortunate circumstances as reasons why you can't stop supporting the processed food industry and frankly if we as individuals who have the ability to stop stopped it would become a more widespread movement. You can't be anticapitalist and support processed food. Some people not having access to non processed food is not a reason. No one is telling someone who has no choice not to eat it's people who have the privilege to choose (which is actually most of the USA. most of us do not live in food deserts so that is not a reason for the majority) to not support processed and fast food industry which supplies a cheap food product that is making people sick and polluting the world.
honestly the best thing I've done/been doing for my diet is not track calories, but massively increase nutritionally dense foods. Sure I've dropped a bit of weight, but my muscle mass has increased and I feel so much better, along with just not getting ill (cold, flu) anymore
@@klaytonalexandermatthews2047 ❣congrats!
The diet/reformatting of my approach to food that I'm on is like that, you don't have to watch calories or count anything, you just stay within a specific range of foods and only eat combinations of them. I'm allowed a bit of the good stuff but it has to be better options. Milled grains and corn chips are out so I eat multigrain chips with hummus, and sweets should be things like honey cookies. It promotes natural food and promotes healthy consumption.
that's just a normal cat on the golden age victorian diet
😂
That's funny
As you mentioned, def needs A LOT more verifiable research. It seems strange that such a short time period would have such profound results and drop offs. Especially with the lack of tracking. It also doesn't explain why they would have these results of their drinking waters weren't good. I think it also has to do with the quality of animal products as well as quantity? I would think their better health outcomes are almost exclusively to do with the cardiovascular health of exercise, social interactions, and better sleep. Cool video none the less, it's always fun to hear about other time period diets.
I'd heard about the drastic effects of the availability of sugar on the health of the lower classes before. So many people died of things caused by dental problems. They didn't have toothpaste, or they used products that were full of sugar to "clean" their teeth.
But I never heard of the rest of it. So weird.
Kiana! Well done on this video. You have a way of being crazy informative while keeping things interesting! I can't imagine the time and effort you put into this one (and all of your videos)! Thanks for being a real, down to earth person. So refreshing to see
bravo kiana, you just made videos both extremely fascinating and entertaining! keep it up, always love to see your videos :)
Unbeknownst to me I've been following this diet (minus the huge calorie intake since I have an office job) for the past couple of months! In an effort to save money while getting enough protein to support my lifting goals, ive been eating a ton of whole sardines, organ meat (beef heart is probably my favorite - and it's super cheap), eggs, and fattier ground beef while reduicing my refined carbs intake to almost nothing. Most of my meals are a plate that's half protein, half veg. I cook using lard. I'm down almost 7lbs in the last month despite never really feeling hungry, and my energy has never been better.
That is amazing. I need to get into the organ meat but, so far I'm struggling. Hopefully it's an acquired taste hahah
@@KianaDochertyhearts are probably the easiest offal meat to get into if you've never had any before, I love lamb hearts cut and cooked like steaks or chicken hearts cooked whole 😄
@@KianaDochertywe get raw liver from a local farm and cut it into “pill” size and swallow it raw! I would only do this with a farm you trust though. I give it to my son twice a week diced up and mixed into a cheese burger.
Hi, i think you have inadvertently found the carnivore diet, something i have been doing for 10weeks with magical results. Good luck.
@@KianaDochertytry cooking chicken liver with cream, it's super delicious!
You should totally do one on the early American diet in the wild frontier!
lol omg that stuff is so interesting. Do you ever watch Townsends? LOL
There's a huge issue with the methodology. That being the infant mortality that they stripped from the figures. The people who died young in that era were likely the ones with the weakest immune systems or who had preexisting conditions. Those people in modern times would often live to adulthood, but then pass away before the average age because of health complications. For example someone who had diabetes or a weak heart.
I love this. I had just been debating whether I should spend more money on vegetables or save more money for my monthly budget, and I think this video helped tip the scale in favor for more vegetables. I thought I had enough before because I went over the daily minimum, but there’s no way I’m getting ten servings worth. Thank you!
This is one of the most eye-opening and impactful videos I've ever seen - I think its so easy to give in to quick calorie foods but recognising the incredible value of low calorie to high nutrition ratio foods in improving all aspects of your health (strength, immune system, brain function, etc) and literally extending your lifespan completely changes how I think of food now. Thank you so much Kiana for creating these amazingly informative and brilliantly designed videos!
Bread (wheat) and sugar - both very high in carbs - replacing the "filler" veggies people previously used undoubtedly contributed to the decline in health; this is still a problem today. I wonder if all this "new" sugar consumption also created a generation (or three) of type 2 diabetics at a time when this disease was not at all understood. High-carb diets lacking in nutrients was and is a cause of premature death. It's not necessary to appear overweight or obese to be affected by high glucose levels. Also not mentioned was the massive alcohol consumption typical during these times (both the "Golden Age" and after), which most likely contributed to declining health, especially when it changed from relatively healthy brewed beer and ales to distilled liquors which had much higher alcohol content and lower (or nonexistent) nutritional value.
Thanks for another GREAT video!!
I recently found this channel. So glad I did!! Fantastic❤
Thank you for what you are doing.
Keep being your amazing self.
3:02 there were still lots of unhealthy things going on at that time especially in England; poor hygiene standards, putting crap like arsenic and lead in makeup, people swam in the same water where sewage drained, the list goes on 😂
So basically you were probably better off in the countryside
@@Window4503 right?! If the diet didn’t kill them then cholera did 😂
Did you even watch the video?
@Window4503 oh 100%, but there was no money there. You could choose to move to the stinking cities, or stay home and starve. Unfortunately the industrial revolution killed off many of the cottage industries and rendered field workers redundant, so they were forced to migrate for factory work, mining etc.
Lead makeup was an Elizabeth I period thing… 300 years earlier. Arsenic in dye was because it made a super bright green that couldn’t be achieved any other way, and they didn’t know it would kill people until later. It’s like Agent Orange or any number of health disasters of the modern era-Victorians weren’t stupid, they just didn’t have access to all of the information and tech/science discoveries to explain things.
Recently been getting into nutrition and when I saw those cruciferous vegetables, I KNEW this had to be right. Fiber makes huge difference + the amount of walking they did + strength training (working, homesteading, etc.) + protein intake??? Of course this would be a better diet than ours today - really reminiscent of the Mediterranean diet like you mentioned and that I'm currently doing!
nutrition is less important than proper exercise. no matter how many veggies you eat i will still outlift you
Great video. That you included the lifestyles of all classes of people was great!
As someone who loves to read and learn about Victorian Era lifestyle, this video was a treat. Thank you
Victorian England: High fat, low sugar, activity.
Modern Americans: Low fat, high sugar, no activity
low fat? 😂 modern american diet is full of vegetable oil!
@@abelhapedrasveg oil isn’t an animal fat. It’s a chemical, like margarine. Cut out the veg oil and eat tallow and butter and fatty meats. Drop all sugar.
This is absolutely fascinating, I traced my ancestors and found a wild amount of my ancestors from rural West Sussex (England) lived to over a hundred years old, at the time I assumed that the strangely long lives actually meant that they just took their time to register the deaths but this new information has got me thinking perhaps they really did live such a long time! I'm going to try to be a bit more open minded and use some recipes from my great granny's old 'Mrs Beetons' cookbook 👍
Unfortunately for us, the people living in the countryside had far less exposure to the same pollutants and stressors we do today. But if we try to mimic their lifestyles (minus the grinding poverty) we would certainly see some serious improvements. Modern medicine plus traditional wisdom could easily have us living until our telomeres run out.
sometimes i skip over your videos cuz i dont necessarily care for the topic but i scroll back cuz im like "wait was that who i think it is? hell yeah" and watch them still ahaha you have such a wonderful voice an personality combo. you can talk about anything and I'll enjoy it.
I've watched from the Diary of a CEO that the human body was used to the feast-famine cycle back then and was totally fine with it. However, today we live in a feast-feast situation which you elaborated here. It's sad how the current mindset shifted and practices were justified because we're 'hustlin' and 'grindin' so hard that we 'deserve' to pamper ourselves by figuratively and literally drowning ourselves with dopamine in many ways possible.
Thank you, Kiana, for these contents. More powers!
Keep up the good work Kiana
Not sure if you’ve covered this but there was also a marked improvement of the health of British children during world war 2 rationing. Most families relied on vegetables and fruits to bulk their meals and had reduced access to sugar, meat and white bread. Thanks for your video it was fascinating 👍
This was great video as always. So insightful and interesting and I might do this topic for my coursework. Thank you and I hope I get to see more of your videos. 👍
Yay I'm soooo happy to see you post more content these couple weeks!
Mostly because i love whenever you post a video lol but yassss awesome, well researched, thoughtful commentary on each one, as always!
As a non professional history buff. I do believe the statements they are making in this paper. I don't think that a counter acts their environment but, it does seem on point with the diet for middle Victoria Era. And yes, lots of babies died, (and outside of pandemics) most people truly did mostly live into their sixty, seventies and eighties, If they survived past 2yrs
The most surprising thing I learned is a turnip is a radish but facing the other direction.
"NICE TO BEET YOU!"
Great video, very thought provoking. Reminds me of Mark Bell talking about a successful diet is where you add in good foods rather than restrict bad ones. When you add in the good stuff there’s less room for bad foods.
I love how well researched your content is. I always learn something. PS I am eating a built bar while watching this because you recommended it - It is really helping curb my addiction to sweets.
This sounds like a really interesting case study in the importance of micro-nutrients. When not accounting for hypertrophy, it seems that micro-nutrients may in this way, be more important than macro-nutrients.
Kiana is the only person that makes history fun
Sam at every size had a very interesting video about pre historic figures yestrrday
Might I recommend: Kaz Rowe, Bernadette Banner, Erin Parsons Makeup, and Ask A Mortician :)
If you're a foody, Tasting History with Max Miller is great. He approaches the history from the aspect of food.
And if you listen to podcasts, "You're Dead to Me" by the BBC incorporates comedians and historians to make for a fun time learning a bit of history.
This is so interesting. I’m glad I found this channel. I subscribed and I am binge-watching!
Yay we are so spoiled. Received some bad news about my kitty at the vet yesterday! Was so nice to have an extra video 😍
Hope your cats okay 🐈 ❤
Being 31, I think it's clear I stem from a generation that will live a shorter life than their parents. Videos like yours show how we have gone so wrong as the whole humankind. Though I was born after the collapse of USSR I am envious every time people older than me tell me about what the food was like (except for the shortages and endless queues) compared to the crap we eat today.
Seeing what the working class of the 1850-80s Victorian England ate I am not at all surprised they lived long and relatively healthy lives.
Decent food still exists just a little harder to find :)
Seeing how the pandemic devastated the ranks of the elderly, I really doubt that's going to be true in practice.
@@Nixeu42 You're saying that as if we couldn't experience another, more severe, pandemic during our lifetime
@@MrSolvalou ...I kinda figured that i didn't need to? I'm also assuming that there won't be an extinction-level meteor strike, a nuclear war, or a super-volcano eruption, along with every other massively devastating event you can think of. Yeah. So did the life expectancy numbers. So?
...Well, okay, no, they didn't, because those numbers are literally based on who died this year in America and at what age they did so, because that's how period life expectancy calculations work. So the pandemic death rate is assumed to be static going into the future. Hence the recent drop in life expectancy.
I cant help but wonder if the high infabt mortality rate potentially removes some of the weaker genes that can survive noe with our advanced medical care thus affecting the end longevity of individuals as well?
Overall, it sounds like the study was onto something
Doubtful.
No, not really. It might weed out real, serious immune disabilities and genetic diseases, but otherwise it'd be totally luck of the draw.
In a way yes, being born in a poor family and having a poor immune system is pretty much incompatible. But then again many genetic diseases like cystic fibrosis are recessive genes and have a result never been wiped out out of a population.
Exactly my thoughts
Wow this was so fascinating! Thanks so much for making this video, I loved it! 😊
Your voice brings much-needed clarity and rationality to the entire topic of diet, nutrition and exercise. 🥰
People in those ages also feared vegetables for a long time because raw foods would make them sick and they didnt know why. The reason was they didnt know to wash any of it so theyd be eating all manner of crud off those things
I don't think so. They weren't animals. They knew how to wash their vegetables.
Raw vegetables made them sick because that's what raw vegetables do to humans...
@@cincin4515No People didn’t understand germs for a long time. Germ theory wasn’t fully accepted until the mid nineteenth century and doctors didn’t even wash their tools between patients during the victorian era, let alone common people knowing to wash their food.
Raccoons know to wash their food. I'm sure people figured out that eating dirt wasn't fun quite fast and gave their food a quick rinse.
Now the quality of water they used might have played a factor, not to mention they didn't know about bacteria and germs so could have been eating alot of contaminated or off food.
In that time water was actually poisoned and that's why things like dust bathing became popular and they stopped water bathing as often. They didn't know what was wrong with the water but they made the connection it was making them sick so that's why less human bathing and less washing vegetables (if memory serves correctly it had to do with dead bodies being disposed of near the water source and polluting the water.) People liked to bath and be clean all throughout history the few times people stopped bathing with water was during a time when the water was polluted somehow or when Ben Franklin told people not to bath lol
I think there are a few pretty critical elements of history here which would have helped make this time what it was. This period of Victorian England would have happened a short period after the end of the Napoleonic Wars and concurrent to the policies leading to the export of agricultural products from Ireland to England and the subsequent famine. Might be interesting if you found any information about the politics at the time and how that would have tied into the changes in the cost of food.
It was also before the industrial revolution was in full swing. These are all hugely important things that were left out.
Love when you post! Always looking forward to your vids ❤
thank you Kiana for this video. I have been following you for a while now and I love the way you alwaya seem to try to get a well-rounded look from all angles on the topics you present. Your passion for what you do radiates. This video in particular was so interesting and I had not seen this content on any other youtuber (of course I don't know all of them). Thank you for your effort creating such compelling content.
I wonder if the fact that they were swimming in poop had a part in their health as well. I am sure their immune systems were insane having to deal with it constantly
Typhoid, chollera, hepatitis says different. They drank booze because the water was poisoned by disease and poop.
Allergies were unheard of despite living in smog and soot all day. Their immune systems were working overdrive and had no business rejecting random products that may or may not be a treat in our clean environment.
Wait, do the current U.S. life expectancy figures you present also exclude infant mortality? Because it may not be as high as it was in Victorian England, but including infant mortality will bring the median life expectancy down, even if slightly.
Also later in the century when prices dropped a lot, you must remember that there wasn't really the idea that the government would regulate anything, let alone food, so you can imagine that if a baker is finding flour to be too expensive, or their bread isn't as white as a competitor up the road, why not halve the flour in your bread and make up the difference with chalk? Sure it's not strictly edible but who's gonna stop you?
Awesome topic for a video, Kiana. Well-presented and engaging. Thanks for your hard work ☺️
I grew up eating fish head, cow heart, brain, lung, etc. it’s very nutritious!
Still unhealthy
@@aguy481 did you not watch the video?
@@UdoADHD she doesn't know a lot about nutrition, she just uses random websites for info
thats nasty
@@Blox117 it’s actually delicious and nutritious. I can tell you have never travelled anywhere because this is normal world wide lol
Overpopulation.
That's why the soil all around the world is depleted.
But some people say we can easily feed 14 billion.
But not with the way agriculture is today...
And life is more than enough calories and nutrients.
Looking at all the environmental damage, and overcrowdet places and mass tourism.
also the more people there are the more you have to produce thus leading to all these food products with shitty fillers cant produce quality for everyone
overpopulation is a myth, every human could get 2 acres of land. To put 2 acres into perspective, picture a baseball field and half it, that's 2 acres.
@@TehLiquid goto any city and say that
@@Griffith74 get out of any city and say that
You see how flawed your logic is.
@@TehLiquid yea we are actually heading for population decline in 2030 because our generations dating market is kicking the bucket.
This video was soo frigging interesting and presented so well . I’m honestly going to be thinking about this all day 🙂
This video is excellent quality. It’s like a TV documentary. Well done.
So it was high amounts of meat, starchy veg and fruit, the exact same as our ancestors millions of years ago, go figure.
It would have been nice to see % of calories by macro-nutrients. Also they lived in much colder environments - how many calories were expended just keeping warm.
Wow wow Kiana! Is that 3 videos?! And on my birthday week! 🎉 best gift ever!
offal is normal to eat here in England, goose fat, and Beef fat is common also. Looking at your grave yards and ours in UK, a big difference in mid victorian era.
Awesome video with a lot of interesting ideas. It's exiting to see so much research being done on the past that can help us take control of our modern day nutrition. 😊
ABSOLUTELY FASINCINATING! I hope you make a follow-up to this! I'm especially interested in learning more about how there were actually more nutrients the produce etc. LOVE YOUR VIDEOS! I always learn something new!
God I wish I could afford to eat 8-10 portions of fruit and veg per day lmao. I can barely afford a bag of apples and carrots each week!
6 apples are £1.50 ($1.90) and a kg bag of carrots are 50p ($0.60) here in UK, we can still afford to eat 8-10 a day, but as a nation we’d rather eat the ultra processed crap I guess. And then some more of it because it’s addictive.
@@JD-ny9qjin Seattle, WA, USA one Gaia apple is about $1.15 each, a 2lb bag of carrots is $2.59. However we have a large network of food banks and EBT for those who can’t afford food. Poor diet is mostly a choice here.
Just eat high fat and protein - they are the most satiating food sources - and cut out the processed junk. And exercise regularly
I assume this study of the "healthiest era" only applies to brits. I don't believe it compares to mediterraneans and other peoples around the globe who were systematically eating a varied diet with lots of veggies and lots of physical activity (working the land, etc) whitout living in a highly contaminated environment.
I really enjoy your content, thank you for so many interesting, informative and eye-opening videos.
How were they 'healthier" if it only lasted for 30 years?
I highly doubt that the healthiest people came from London. That just sounds ridiculous, especially considering what we now know about "blue zones," where indigenous people from tropical locations live over 100 years, while staying in peak health. Look it up, they still exist today. Areas free from pollution, fast food, junk food, etc. They also have a diverse, plant based diet. So I strongly doubt this is true for everyone in the world. Maybe it's true for Europeans, but not for the world. Not at all.
Which blue zones don't eat animal products? Stop misappropriating 😂
Definitely agree with you on this! Unfortunately we don’t have as much historical data on these ethnic groups
This was so interesting! Thank you!
Your channel is a gift
The body can only burn 4,000 calories a day no matter how much work/activity you do. So a 5,000 calorie a day is unlikely.
No way. Michael Phelps famously ate 8000 calories per day.
@@goaway6339maybe he said, that but research says it’s 4,000
Also, props to whoever did those food illustrations. Lovely
What a fantastic video. It might be my favorite video you've done. You should do a history of nutrition series
I just discovered your channel and your content has been really helpful. Thank you. ❤
Wow 🤩 so informative thanks for making these high quality documentary style videos!
Just a quick note, this video compares life expectancy for victorians (adjusted to remove infant and child death) with American current life expectancy from birth (ie without adjusting to remove infant death). Which may be why it looks like they lived longer.
Kiana, I just have to tell you that you are so beautiful! I am seriously blown away every time I watch your videos. You come across as intelligent and level-headed, and you present yourself so well. Just a reminder to feel good about yourself today 😊
I remember discussing similar topic with a historian friend that people in the middle ages used to be taller than the people in the late victorian era. One of the articles was also dealing with diet in the middle ages and despite the low life expectancy due to the high mortality rates (especially infant and childhood), people could really live long and healthy despite the hardships. I'm not promoting those ages but we could learn something from those times and implement it to our lives.
Your content is just pure, wonderful gold. ❤