Health & Diet
Effects of Industrial Revolution: Then & Now
Industrial Revolution: Health & Diet
Until a little more than one hundred years ago, the chief power used in the production of food, clothing, and shelter was hand power. Cattle and horses were used to cultivate the fields. Windmills and water wheels were employed to grind corn and wheat but most tools and machines were worked by hand. James Watt's invention of steam engine paved the way for mass production of food.
Industrialization gave rise to two new socioeconomic classes: a new middle class of merchants and managers, who demanded of socially desirable foods, and a new class of industrial workers, who could afford only the cheapest foods. Although the poverty, poor sanitary conditions, malnutrition, and diseases that prevailed among workers in the industrial cities and towns was a blight on the Industrial Revolution, resources were soon mobilized to meet the food demands of the middle classes. Eventually the poor also benefited, as increases production and new techniques made cheaper foods available to them.
People also started to rely on mass-produced food as there was no room in towns and cities for gardens to keep a pig pen or grow their own food. Many didn't even have a kitchen.
Food-processing procedures were developed, particularly following the Industrial Revolution, which allowed for quantitative and qualitative food and nutrient combinations that had not previously been encountered over the course of our evolution.
- Industrial Periods have fundamentally altered 7 crucial nutritional characteristics of our diets:
1) glycemic load
2) fatty acid composition
3) macronutrient composition
4) micronutrient density
5) acid-base balance
6) sodium-potassium ratio
7) fiber content.
The Industrial era allowed for the production of bread flour devoid of the more nutrient-dense bran and germ. In addition, since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution some 200 years ago, the per capita refined sucrose (sugar) consumption in England steadily rose from 6.8 kg in 1815 to 54.5 kg in 1970.
The evolutionary collision of our ancient genome with the nutritional qualities of recently introduced foods may underlie many of the chronic diseases of Western civilization.