In the 60's & 70's alot of garbage was being thrown in food..to make foods "convenient, tasty and affordable".. Corporations started experimenting with lots of chemicals, that were never intended for human consumption, to add flavor and or texture to their products. It's the same now. And because it" falls within tolerable levels for the average human body", according to the FDA, it's OK.. Yet rules and regulations for what the FDA actually controls, oversees, or regulates has changed in many ways over the years.
You're right. But companies adding additives to foods has always been an issue and was far worse before the FDA. In the early part of the 20th century canned foods were packed with formaldehyde to prevent spoilage. Foods were spiked with straight up amphetamines and labeled as "energy elixers". In the thirties a company simply added an analogue of the chemical that would become antifreeze into food marketed to children as a healthy "meal". How did they choose that chemical? They simply went to a chemical supplier and picked a chemical with an exotic name and *poof!* they added it and touted it as a "health envigorator". Kids were dying all across the country for YEARS before anyone noticed the link. Like most regulatory entities the FDA began with good intentions and saved us from ourselves just in time. But as time passed corporations began to induce sway on through various avenues. The bureaus that once protected the citizenry from wrong-doing are now following other interests. I just hope we get our heads straight and, one day, chemicals like high-fructose corn syrup will be removed like the elixers of the 20s.
Now, Pepsi and coke are way worse than the tobacco spiked watered down kerosene whiskey that was served in some bars back in the horse and buggy days... Sure that would peel paint, but coke will remove rust from a bumper or wheel or even eat corrosion off your battery posts on your car.
Coke originally contained a tenth of a gram of cocaine and a host of other questionable secret chemicals in its mystery formula when it was first made at the turn of the century. I'll take the current version. Cocaine and hallucinogens were sometimes mixed, bottled with flavored alcohol and sold a "good times elixers" before prohibition... I'm sure it was fun, but, YIKES! Alcohol was a dicey proposition back in the day. Much like today you simply couldn't trust what was prepared and packaged at one place and sold to you as a product.
But I believe PC's referring to before that time.. Back when foods weren't filled with preservatives and chemicals that many people don't know about or that some can't even pronounce.
I agree. You'd have to turn the clock back a long ways. Not just modern preservitives but pesticides have always been an issue. Early pesticides were simply light traces of sea/salt water but that damaged the soil rendering it useless. As we learned a little chemistry (but had no chemical industry) we quickly began to use pyrethrum, copper sulfate, slacked lime and other natural insecticides (not bad). Then as we learned even more about chemistry we began to experiment in exotic mixtures containing mercury and arsenic in increasing complexity through the 11th century until the industrial revolution when we got crafty. We started using coal byproducts and petrolium formulas. Then came the 40s-70s... We began to notice that suddenly there was no wildlife near farms... At all. Read
Silent Spring for more info about that.
Prepackaged/processed food has always been a problem. Early canned foods may have lacked modern preservatives but they would put crazy chemicals in it to change its color and make it so it didnt smell odd. Food processing knowledge for the average person was arms length. Ingredients would leave your farm town to go to a factory in "the city" and return in a crate filled with cans and boxes to be put on the local store shelf. A family making its own food from the ground up was the vast minority. Here's an excerpt from
The Jungle to describe what food processing was like in the 30s-40s. Remember this wasn't sensationalism it is how food processing was being done for decades at all levels before people knew anything at all. If you didn't personally work in a food processing plant or directly know someone in the industry you had NO IDEA what was in your food at all. No one checked on your behalf, inspected ANYTHING, and the label didn't tell you anything beyond the name of the product and some advertising Mumbo-Jumbo. As long as no one could directly link your failing health or death to a food product it was all fair game. Even if a product did kill you, your family would have to ask the store where they got it. Then you'd have to ask the warehouse where it shipped from. Then you
might know where it came from. The world was very VERY different back then but it is the same exact problem we have today. The food they make behind the curtain is GARBAGE.
I'd say the the industrial revolution all the way through to the 50's has to be THE WORST time in human history for eating a meal. The combination of insane pesticides, terrible hygiene in preparation, and food additives... No Thanks.
Do you really want that "back in the day" sausage? (Stop giggling.)
From The Jungle by Upton Sinclair...
Chapter 14
“There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white–it would be dosed with borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together. This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one– there were things that went into the sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit. There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the sausage. There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old nails and stale water–and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public’s breakfast. Some of it they would make into “smoked” sausage–but as the smoking took time, and was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to make it brown. All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they would stamp some of it “special,” and for this they would charge two cents more a pound.”
Mostly.. The obesity epidemic is from people eating processed garbage, and having a very easy lifestyle. There are healthy foods, but the garbage foods are easier to come by and are more affordable... A dbl cheese burger and fries with a soda/pop is 3$ and up. A salad at most places(iceberg lettuce, no real nutrition) is 4$ and up. A 2 liter of pop is 1$ and water is 3$????
Margarine was originally (supposedly) created to fatten up turkeys and chickens... But it killed em. But too much money was invested.. So it was salted and sold to go on toast instead.. I've researched this.. And there's evidence if it being true and also evidence of it being bull... One thing I do know.. Take a tub of Margarine and set it outside.. Most if not all living creatures will avoid it.. No nutritional value.. Put butter out, and you'll find lots of bugs and other things, in and around it..
They started off with good intentions.. Make more food readily available to the world. Make it cheaper and easier to feed mankind.. Then it turned into, if I do this.. I can make more money.. And it shouldn't hurt many people.. Controlled and calculated risks are the norm for companies today.. And that risk is always at our expense...
The human body is designed to be in motion. We're "nomadic" by design and trait. Technology has given us the ability not to have to be anymore... And technology has given us a much easier lifestyle..
Lifespan has little to do with it.. I see 12 year old kids that are 100 lbs over weight. Sitting on our butts and having it easy.. That's our issue.. Our bodies aren't able to cope with the processed garbage and sugars of today's foods. I can tell you out of experience that a change in how you eat(going away from so much processed crap) alone, can make a huge difference in how you look and feel. Granted we can't ever get back to free range cattle of the 1800's and away from hormone injected animals... But many of us wish we could..
I agree across the board on this one.... Smart choices, which unfortunately are very expensive choices, you can get healthy "natural" food. But it takes willpower, a monetary commitment, and an individual educational commitment that 90% of the population has no interest in pursuing. Look, I love crappy food. But I wish getting food that was bad for your body took the same commitment as buying the healthy alternatives. Just this year I found my own local butcher. It's crazy having a guy who hand picks who he buys his meat from and who can actually tell you what the food you're eating ate.