By James Milnes Gaskell
These days we are almost overwhelmed by the number of articles imploring us to eat local, to cut out sugar, fat, soft drinks, salt, processed foods and whatever else fashion has taken against. We are beginning to be concerned about the prevalence of diabetes, high blood pressure, and cancer. We have noticed that there seem to be more people including school children overweight than there used to be, but that is someone else’s problem so why worry? Perhaps we need a history lesson? History is boring you say. Not if it can be shown self-evidently to be relevant to life today. I had intended to try to make a survey of causes of death in Nevis in the 1930’s and compare them with causes of death this century. Instead, and of absolute relevance to us today, I shall tell you of the 2009 study by Dr. Paul Clayton and Judith Rowbotham, entitled ‘How the mid Victorians (1850-1880) Worked, Ate and Died’.
The finding followed a survey of public records for the working class in England. Those records reveal, surprisingly, that if you assess life expectancy from age 5 onwards the mid-Victorians lived as long or longer than we do today. Many more died in childbirth or in the insanitary city conditions in the first five years of life. We have to note that this was before the public health movement and the huge advance in sanitation, surgery, drugs and infection control with antibiotics. The authors say that their research indicates that the mid Victorians’ good health was entirely due to their superior diet.
By 1850 in England the new railway system provided the means of transporting an abundance of fresh food into the cities. That food was all organically grown or reared or was wild, not subject to modern pesticides, inorganic fertilisers, or factory farming systems. The agricultural improvements of the previous century and the 1845 repeal of the Corn Laws brought respectively higher quality and cheaper food. Vegetables and fruits had their seasons, and were affordable. Onions, carrots, cabbage, turnips, potatoes and Jerusalem artichokes were staples. Broccoli, peas, leeks and watercress were also cheap and readily available. Apples were inexpensive and available from August to May, then cherries, plums, greengages, strawberries, gooseberries and raspberries were consumed. Chestnuts, hazelnuts and walnuts came in turn. The herring was the staple fish in the urban diet, fresh, dried or soused. Cod, haddock, eels, sprats and shellfish, oysters, mussels, cockles, whelks could be had Monday to Friday. No modern refrigeration meant that fish had to be eaten fresh or else preserved by drying or salting. Apparently, and perhaps surprisingly, the complete absence of meat was rare. Even the poorer households would have the less desirable cuts, and the offal meats, liver, heart, sweetbreads, brains, kidney and ‘pluck’ (the lungs and intestines of sheep).
Many urban families kept a few backyard hens. Hard cheeses were popular. Dripping (rendered down beef fact) was widely used for cooking and as a spread on bread. In sum these mid-Victorians ate 50-100% more than we do, but did not become overweight because of the nature of that diet and because of their much greater physical activity.
In the 21st Century we die slowly of the degenerative diseases, heart disease, cancer, high blood pressure, strokes, and diabetic complications, and are afflicted by Alzheimers, Parkinsons, Multiple Sclerosis etc. The incidence of these kinds of conditions during the mid-Victorian study period was less than 10% of ours. They died chiefly, and rapidly, of infections and traumas. Cancers were relatively rare. Contrast this to modern America where we are told that one in two people are now expected to develop cancer. In 1869 the Physician to London’s Charing Cross Hospital describes lung cancer as “…one of the rarer forms of a rare disease. You may probably pass the rest of your student’s life without seeing another example of it”. What does ‘Pink Lily’ think of this? I know that their concern is breast cancer, but both lung and breast cancers were apparently not at all common in the 1850-80 period. The claim of the authors of this study is that the diet then was heavy in phytonutrients that protect against cancer, and that the modern diet is altogether deficient in those protective nutrients. It is evident therefore that the degenerative diseases are not a necessary function of or caused by old age but are driven by a chronic malnutrition, a situation in which the diet has ample ‘base’ calories but inadequate mineral, vitamin and other micro nutrient levels, to equip the individuals own immune system to fight off numerous degenerative conditions.
Given that the Victorians did not have modern drugs, antibiotics, anaesthetics and today’s surgery, or scans and other diagnostic techniques, their high life expectancy is particularly striking. If we all lived today on the same kind of diet, and expended a similar physical energy we would, with the assistance of antibiotics and modern surgery surely live longer (and happier) lives, perhaps significantly beyond current expectations. And the pharmaceutical industry dependent as it is on the production of drugs to ameliorate or dampen down degenerative conditions would contract, for some companies into extinction.
The superior diet days of 1850-80 did not last. New milling developments made white flour and bread cheaply available to the masses. Imported fatty salty canned meats, syrup sweetened canned fruits, condensed sweetened milk and cheaper sugar which led to a huge rise in confectionary, made the wholesome and nutritious diet unfashionable. The decline in health was sharp. The mid-Victorian navvies, engaged on rail and road construction, long before the days of backhoes and excavators could routinely, individually, shovel up to 20 tons of earth from foot level to above their heads each day. This is by our standards a phenomenal feat of strength and stamina. If each shovel load weighs 10 lbs., the navvy makes the repetitive motion approximately 4500 times in a day, or to make it easy for ourselves assuming a 10-hour day then 450 times per hour. No bad backs then! But by 1900, one of every two young men volunteering for the Boer War had to be rejected because they were so undernourished. Although, since then, there has been a great improvement in size and strength, there has never been a return to the vigorous good health of the 1850-80’s, based on its sound nutritious diet.
I suspect that here in Nevis we had a good diet until maybe 40 years or so ago. We grew, reared or caught our food, but our decline in health like that of the Victorians was, when it came, rapid. This study shows us beyond all doubt that we must adopt a healthy lifestyle. We have to farm properly in accordance with the rules of nature, cook that which we produce, and take regular physical exercise. Those who can’t be bothered now know the likely consequences. From the Nation’s perspective and that of the politicians who control our taxes and health services, it is sure that the preventative health care to be brought about by a sound nutritious diet is inexpensive and is certain to diminish of costs of caring for such of our number that fall to degenerative disease. On our present course we are going to be able less and less to pay for care for the sick. In American, ahead of us in this wretched race to degeneration, US$20 billion per year is now spent on kidney dialysis alone, every year. Many will know that kidney failure is one of the morbidities associated with diabetes. It is going to ruin them. Let it not ruin us. The choice is ours. Our politicians talk of prevention being better than cure. Indeed it is, but it is up to us, as individuals for our own selves and our families, not them, to make it so.
