Poor rural Victorians 'had best diet'

From The BBC

9 March 2018

Poor, rural societies which ate high-quality foods bought locally had the best diet and health in mid-Victorian Britain, a new report has revealed. The healthiest regions, measured by low mortality rates, were often the most isolated. In those areas, people would have consumed plenty of locally-produced potatoes, whole grains, vegetables, fish and milk. There were also fewer deaths there from pulmonary tuberculosis. This suggests people had better diets, the researchers writing in JRSM Open suggest. They found the most nutritious diets were enjoyed in isolated, rural areas of England, the mainland and islands of Scotland and the west of Ireland - which was at that time part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Dr Peter Greaves, study author from the Leicester Cancer Research Centre, said: "The fact that these better-fed regions of Britain also showed lower mortality rates is entirely consistent with recent studies that have shown a decreased risk of death, following improvement towards a higher Mediterranean dietary standard. The rural diet was often better for the poor in more isolated areas because of payment in kind, notably in grain, potatoes, meat, milk or small patches of land to grow vegetables or to keep animals. Unfortunately, these societies were in the process of disappearing under the pressure of urbanisation, commercial farming and migration." Dr Greaves said these changes in Victorian society led to worse diets among poor, rural populations and resulted in locally-produced food becoming less diverse - something that has since occurred across the world.

In the middle of the 19th Century, fewer than half of the near 19 million people in England and Wales were living in large urban centres. Among the three million population of Scotland, only one million lived in town districts, while fewer than 30% of the 5.5 million population of Ireland was urban. For many poor people across Britain, white bread made from bolted wheat flour was the staple component of the diet. When they could afford it, people would supplement this with vegetables, fruit and animal-derived foods such as meat, fish, milk, cheese and eggs - a Mediterranean-style diet. Poor people living in wealthier farming districts who were usually paid in cash often had great difficulty getting these foods on a regular basis, but in more isolated areas of Britain milk and fish were more accessible. A good number of country dwellers lived to ripe old ages, the researchers said. In the poor rural districts of Connaught in the west of Ireland, for example, nearly 20% of people reached the age of 65 or more and some reached the age of 95 or even 100.

[I always suspected that civilisation and especially urbanisation was fundamentally a bad decision on someone’s part. Of course it’s also true that some of the best and healthiest diets we’ve had in the UK for quite some years was during the government rationing during WW2. With little to binge on and an enforced (except for the rich and powerful naturally) balanced diet people’s health actually improved during the war years rather than, as most expected, decline due to lack of imported produce. Plus of course in both cases of the Victorians and WW2 there was a significant lack of processed food. Basically if you want to live longer healthier lives stop eating crap.]

Just Finished Reading: When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi (FP: 2016)

At 36 Dr Kalanithi was on his way to becoming a top-flight neurosurgeon, a man at the top of a difficult field with his whole future ahead of him. He had a new wife, a bright future and a life-long dream of making a difference helping people. Then one morning he woke to crippling back pain. Not overly surprised or worried – he was after all standing up in an operating theatre and bending over patients for hours at a time – he took some painkillers and got on with his day. The pain subsided and he thought nothing more of it. Then weeks later it happened again only worse this time. Still thinking it was nothing he went to his own hospital and booked himself in for an MRI scan. Not expecting to find anything worse that a compressed vertebrae or other spinal related problems he was incredulous at the probable cause – cancer. After the initial shock wore off it was time for him and his wife – both experienced medical practitioners – to make decisions: chemo or radiation therapy, work or no work, what was important to keep and worth any risks they needed to take. Immediately he asked the question no doubt on everyone’s lips – how long? Not willing to put a date on it his doctor (an expert in the field) told him that the most important thing he could focus on was fighting the disease. Everything else would arrive in its own time. So fight they would. But they would also do one other thing – they would have a child now rather than leaving it to later in their careers. All of a sudden there was no ‘later’ without the risk of it being simply too late. Paul’s career could have gone one of two ways. Passionate about the written word from his earliest days he often imagined himself as an author. Equally passionate about medicine and about the brain in particular he wanted to use his skill to save people’s lives. With that option potentially closed to him Paul decided to spend whatever time he had left – 8 months it turned out – to write this book about his battle with cancer and his thoughts about what makes life worth living in the face of death.

After reading ‘Being Mortal – Illness, Medicine and What Matters in the End’ by Atul Gawande I couldn’t help but compare these two similar works, similar as topic goes anyway. Paul’s book was, as you might expect, a far more personal narrative than ‘Being Mortal’. Oddly because of this I actually found this book surprisingly less satisfying than the previous foray into death and the meaning of life. Possibly because of the much narrower focus on Paul and his immediate family, possibly because ‘Being Mortal’ looked not only at death itself and how individuals coped (or didn’t) with its approach but how western society at large shied away from the reality of death and practically ignored it when it couldn’t hide from it. ‘Being Mortal’ was, I found, a much more cultural book than Paul’s well written emotional memoir and I liked it (although ‘like’ is probably not exactly the appropriate word her) more because of that. This is not to say that Paul’s book was poor because it certainly was not. It’s thoughtful, emotionally rich and deeply personal. It puts you right inside someone’s head when they are presented with a fact beyond argument that will change their life far from what they imagined it would be. Recommended.

Cartoon Time.

Just Finished Reading: Deadly Beloved by Max Allan Collins (FP: 2007)

It hardly gets more open and shut than this. A cheated on wife, a husband caught in the act with a hooker and a gun emptied into their joint bed killing both of them. But first impressions can be deceiving. Why was the wife ‘off her meds’? Who tipped her off that her husband was having an illicit affair and why did a known hooker, who didn’t exactly need to be persuaded to do her job, have the date-rape drug in her system? For female PI Ms Michael Tree (Ms Tree – Mystery, get it!) it’s a case her agency can hardly refuse especially when it’s brought to her by her previous boss on the police department and there seems to be a link to her own husband’s death just before their honeymoon. The conspiracy she begins to uncover has been in place for years dating from the conviction of a notorious crime lord and his daughter’s take-over and legitimisation of the ‘business’. The question is: Has the business rally gone legit and why do the families opponents keep dying in seemingly random accidents and acts of violence. Finding out could be the making of the detective agency or it could reunite Ms Tree with her husband – permanently.

Once you got over the somewhat contrived nature of the plot this turned out to be a really fun read. Michael Tree (confusingly both the husband’s & wife’s name!) was a great character, always really with a snappy come-back, a fist or a bullet and wasn’t afraid to take the bad-guy down even if she had then to explain her actions to the police (again). People did tend to die or get really messed up around her I can certainly say that – a bit like watching a female Dirty Harry at work! General characterisation was very good – and not just for the main characters. They all had their own unique backstories and motivations which made sense. The plot kept me guessing until about 2/3 of the way through when I clued into a fair chunk of the mystery so I wasn’t 100% surprised by the reveal but it was nice to figure at least some of the narrative before the author laid it out. That’s always a satisfying feeling. Unfortunately, to date, there hasn’t been any more Tree mysteries in novel form but there is, apparently, a whole comic book series out there which I was unaware of. There’s even talk of a movie at some point but nothing confirmed yet. I’d certainly read more of her books and give the movie a once over if the trailer was OK and they picked the right person for the role. I think I’ll also be checking out more crime novels by this author. MUCH better than the last Hard Case crime novel. Recommend for all crime buffs.   

Cartoon Time.

Twitter users mock Trump for linking video games to gun violence

By Tom Gerken for BBC Social News

2 March 2018

"Video game violence and glorification must be stopped - it is creating monsters!" Six years after Donald Trump tweeted his views on video game violence, it seems he is looking to take action. In a White House briefing following the Florida school shooting, when press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked about the president's policy on gun control she said Donald Trump will "be meeting with members of the video game industry to see what they can do on that front". Ms Sanders response has been widely discussed on social media, with some criticising the president for pointing the finger at fictional guns, rather than actual firearms.

Some people wondered if they had inadvertently stumbled into the past, as the relationship between video games and violent behaviour has long been debated in the media. One person asked why the White House was discussing video games, saying that Trump "has plenty of ideas for ending mass shootings, except gun control". While artist and director Rob Sheridan, known for his work with music group Nine Inch Nails, wondered if game industry executives might suggest similar measures. This was followed by Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane pointing out that "other countries without America's gun problem also have video games". And one person tried to find the funny side of things, re-writing Australia's 1996 gun ban for comic effect. But some people praised Trump for taking action, with one person saying the president is "doing more and engaging more than Obama did", and another applauding Trump for addressing the "surrounding issues" of guns. Meanwhile, Twitter users have begun to question exactly who it is that Donald Trump intends on meeting. Video game journalist Jason Schreier tweeted that the Entertainment Software Association, whose members include many of the largest game publishers in the United States, says neither the ESA nor its members have been invited to a meeting. And if a meeting does happen, one person wondered how the meeting could go ahead without causing contention.

[Of course violent video games in particular have long been blamed for actually violence in real life (IRL). Yet study after study has shown no such link. Literally millions of people – including me – play violent computer games and have done for years without harming, never mind killing, another human being. Plus, as Seth McFarlane rightly points out, both computer games and violent movies are universal products sold across the world – except in a very few places where they are banned or heavily censored. Yet the gun violence problem is most acute, by a LONG way, in only one culture – America. So call me sceptical if you wish but how do you explain a clear lack of real violence caused by these items across the globe and yet, rather mysteriously, there is a link (which equally mysteriously cannot be pinned down) between violent games and actual violence in one rather unique culture. Surely, logically, this points in one direction only? That it is American culture, rather than violent games, that is producing the real violence. Of course any country that tries honestly looking at its own culture searching for faults will be rather reluctant to do so and even more reluctant to find them and make them public so I guess the blame game will continue a bit longer before people give up and American gun violence is seen as simply ‘inexplicable’.]

"Taking power implies taking it away from its holders, not by occupying their posts but by making it permanently impossible for them to keep their machinery of domination running. Revolution is first and foremost the irreversible destruction of this machinery. It implies a form of collective practice capable of bypassing and superseding it through the development of an alternative network of relations."

Andre Gorz, 1980.