This month, Buzz launches a series of articles which will delve into the major dieting developments over the last few decades. Jon Sutton addresses the diet industry, food trends, evolution and revolution.
From the low-fat 1980s to the Atkins 00s and onwards into today’s modern times of endless online options, we will present what the experts say – both for and against – the world’s most popular diets. But rather than simply singing the praises (or lack thereof) of each fad diet, we will group them according to the thought processes and theories, the science and the studies, that first brought each one into fruition.
With the emergence of veganism as a worldwide movement, a diet choice which was once based on ethical reasoning alone has now found its place in the ever-growing healthy eating market. How it compares against other recent food trends, in terms of weight-loss and health improvement, is yet to be unequivocally proved.
There is an insidious part of diet research; take the case in the 1960s, when study into the negative effects of fat, funded by the sugar industry, incorrectly suggested that fat was the cause of heart disease. The New York Times recently revealed that in fact sugar is the greater culprit, and that the science had been manipulated to sweeten the study’s corporate funders.
In the case of veganism, studies have been carried out; many are done so by advocates of veganism without testing the data against other lifestyle choices. The same may be said of veganism’s opposite number, the meat-eater diet. Time will tell if these biases can be stripped out from the research.
Over the last few decades, the world has seen no end of conflicting dietary advice, most of which has been shown to be outdated as new studies have emerged in its wake. But one thing that most experts do agree on is that we eat too much. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors, surviving for millions of years with no access to storage and refrigeration facilities, ate as and when food became available. But the agricultural revolution provided the human race with the ability (and the cravings) to overindulge in masses of farmed and stored food products.
This revolution saw us become almost entirely reliant on wheat – a foodstuff known to be very hard to digest when compared to the diet of a hunter-gatherer. Moreover, in recent times we have managed to find a way to make our diets yet more damaging by removing the natural nutrition from our food – the parts which are more likely to rot in storage – and replacing them with longer-lasting sugar, salt and bad fat to even out the taste. Many experts suggest that the world has never eaten so poorly. The food industry’s profit margins have increased as quickly as our waistlines – and the queues at the doctor’s office have followed in that growth.
Today, we never stop consuming. Breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, brunch, lunch, dinner, supper; gallons of sugary beers, wines and soft drinks and of course, regular ‘treats’. Even the health-conscious gym-goer will make sure to consume a pre-workout snack and a post-workout shake.
And although it could be argued that the diets laid out below are tainted, since they have all come from the multi-million-pound diet industry with its myriad contradictions, it’s worth considering that it was the multi-billion-pound food industry that created all of those unnecessary mealtimes, all those sugary snacks and the over-indulgent mindset that goes hand-in-hand with our rapidly declining health.
Even whilst having drastically differing viewpoints on other issues, real food experts all generally agree that we eat too much. And that fact is contradicted only by the food industry giants who are profiting from our overconsumption. So, whether we put our faith in veganism, meat-only or anything in between, it seems that the data is in. Now, more than ever before in history, we need to address our dietary intake. Simply put: less is more.