
How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died (2009) - ganonm
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2672390/
======
stupidcar
One of the paper's authors, Dr Judith Rowbotham, is a historian, not a
scientist:

[https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/judith-
rowbotham](https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/staff/judith-rowbotham)

And here is the other author, Dr Paul Clayton, promoting "MonaVie"
supplements:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C28Bx_jbP_o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C28Bx_jbP_o)

MonaVie turns out to be a multi-level marketing company selling food
supplements (the same kind of supplements that this paper goes out of its way
to recommend) that defaulted on a $152m loan in 2015 and went into
foreclosure:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonaVie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MonaVie)

~~~
wdr1
So how did this get published by the NIH?

And is there a way to tell if it has been peer reviewed?

~~~
obstinate
It was actually published in this journal:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Envir...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Journal_of_Environmental_Research_and_Public_Health).
The journal charges a fee to have one's paper processed. I'm not sure if that
is typical in open access journals, but the analogy to self-publishing fiction
makes me slightly uncomfortable.

------
georgeecollins
This doesn't seem like a fair comparison because you are comparing the
lifespans of a population that includes people who needed modern medical
attention to survive to age 5 to another population that contained none of
those people.

~~~
ekianjo
Agree with that argument, but that still would not explain 90% difference in
degenerative diseases occurence, unless you make the extraordinary claim that
only 1 person of 10 nowadays would have survived in the Victorian Era.

~~~
tpeo
That's not what a 90% reduction in the incidence of degenerative disease
means. If degenerative disease occurs to 1 in 1000 people, a 90% percent
reduction would be from that to 1 in 10,000 people. There's no need to make
that claim.

------
marvel_boy
> mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was
> as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative
> disease was 10% of ours

This is surprising, to say the least.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>life expectancy at age 5

This is the catch. The kid with asthma or diabetes didn't make it to age 5
back then, but today he does. Replace asthma or diabetes with other
conditions. If your higher infant mortality is weeding out everyone who has
any chronic disease which may effect longevity then this is what you get. The
downside is that parents back then were burying a lot of babies.

------
raketenolli
Is it possible that the high infant mortality weeded out more children from
less healthy socioeconomic and genetic backgrounds than today? So on average
you'd get healthier adults which would live longer? Also, I don't like their
comparison of the life expectancy of a Victorian 65-year old with a modern
5-year old. Of course the former would be relatively high.

~~~
notahacker
Yeah, that comparison is so jarringly wrong it makes me question the rest of
their research.

Modern Britons' life expectancies at 65 which actually are "comparable" with
Victorian life expectancies at 65 are available in well publicised,
frequently-updated and granular time series from ONS[1]. But since they
suggest life expectancy is about twice as long for todays' 65 year olds as
Victorian ones the authors appear to have deliberately distorted the truth by
choosing a less relevant basis for comparison instead.

Needless to say, if they're prepared to commit statistical frauds as blatant
as this, the rest of their claims should be regarded as suspicious especially
the more outrageous longevity claims. It wasn't a surprise to find that one of
the authors runs a nutrition supplement company and has been featured on Ben
Goldacre's Bad Science blog before

Which is a shame, because there probably are valid, non-obvious points about
aspects of Victorian diets and lifestyles that were healthier than ours,
buried under wilfully misleading claims about degenerative diseases being a
purely modern phenomenon.

[1][https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...](https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/bulletins/lifeexpectancyatbirthandatage65bylocalareasintheunitedkingdom/2014-04-16)

~~~
lucozade
Indeed. The like for like historical comparisons [1] that cover the period of
the paper to today lend themselves to a very different interpretation. If
anything, life expectancy for a 65yo dropped a little through their "golden
age" and has been increasing since.

Also, if you do the 5yo comparison, life expectancy for a male was 54.6 in
1841 and 79.4 in 2011.

As this information is trivially available and the life expectancy claim is
central to their argument, it's hard not to conclude that the article is
willfully misleading.

[1] [http://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-has-life-expectancy-changed-
ove...](http://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-has-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/)

------
sotojuan
This actually can go back to the middle ages. Obviously, middle ages longevity
is by no means comparable to the 1800s, let alone now, but the people who made
it past say, 30-40 did live until their 70s, even 80s. People didn't drop dead
at 35.

~~~
gkya
Also in Diogenes Laerteos' book most philosophers from 7th century BC to 3rd
AD live about 70-80 years (the book itself written about 3rd AD).

------
pessimizer
Infant mortality is constantly elided in order to exaggerate lifespan
increases. Not to imply that infant mortality isn't a good thing to reduce,
but when you say the average person dies at 50 and there's no concentration of
people dying around 50, but instead concentrations in infancy and at the same
age people die now (or later), the mean is deceptive.

~~~
mulletbum
I don't know why, but this information has come up a lot in conversation the
past week for me. My family, which mostly live unhealthy sedentary lives,
discussed dying at 60. I was trying to make the point to them, if we gathered
the statistic for people who live over 40, you would find that the average
lifespan is much close to 80-90. The reason being is infant mortality and
youthfulness. When you are young, you take many more risks (ie. driving fast
in your car, drinking and drugging, etc.). There is a certain threshold age
where you are just competing with Cancer and getting old, but the rate of
death is much lower.

Now I should just do some real research to back up that for them with
statistics.

~~~
kasey_junk
Wars have a statistically significant impact on life expectancy for young
adults (males typically) as well. You can see it in the cohorts aged around
massive conflicts.

~~~
InitialLastName
Thanks in part to globalization and free trade, most of the West haven't had a
demographically significant war in ~70 years.

~~~
kasey_junk
Yep. Luckily. But a) the rest of the world has and b) 70 years is a single
generation, thus impacting the cohort in the data.

------
riveteye
They do not take into account the mass introduction of environmental
contaminants following the 1880s Industrial Revolution.

------
cko
Assuming this is all accurate, imagine if the Mid-Victorians had access to the
vaccines, antibiotics, surgeons, and dentists that we do.

------
Normal_gaussian
"Our recent research indicates that the mid-Victorians’ good health was
entirely due to their superior diet. This period was, nutritionally speaking,
an island in time; one that was created and subsequently squandered by
economic and political forces. This begs a series of questions. How did this
brief nutritional ‘golden age’ come about? How was it lost? And could we
recreate it?"

Very interesting. My take on the rest of it shows that they ate more
vegetables relative to calorific intake, and less sugar. I'm not convinced on
the drinking or tobacco comments - I think these are things that are not as
prevalent in my generation as much as the authors may have thought it is.

~~~
Chris2048
wasn't sugar fairly expensive at some time?

------
pinaceae
The data space around this is so complex, it is simply not possible to come to
single, clear conclusions.

Lots of interesting questions, no answers to date:

1., Did the introduction of electricity and mass refrigeration amplify/cause
the deterioration of public health?

2., Did the massive losses of young, fit, male population in WW1 and WW2 lead
to the decline of public health in the partaking nations? It stopped fine
genetic material from procreating (you needed to fulfill health standards to
serve after all). Losses of that scale were not encountered before.

etc etc.

Correlation, causation, the usual.

------
daviddavis
Forget the paleo diet. Someone ought to start the Victorian diet.

~~~
awjr
I suspect a diet of no cars would be very unpallatable these days.

~~~
Piskvorrr
Even if offset by trains and dirigibles?

~~~
awjr
I think people just did not travel that far and would think nothing of walking
5-10 miles to work. Public transport was not very prevalent outside of cities
I suspect.

------
mosselman
So we need to do two things?:

1\. Move a lot more (twice as much). What would this entail in today's
society? Fitness?

2\. Eat twice as much as we do now and focus on fish, fruits and vegetables?

~~~
pja
Doubling calorie needs is _hard_ if you have a sedentary job in the modern
world.

Walk / Cycle to work every day at a fast pace (1 hour total). Play some kind
of sport daily at lunchtime / after work (1 hour). You’ve just used an extra
1000 calories or so. Congratulations: you’re almost half way to your goal of
doubling your daily calorie output.

Plus you still need to spend time doing all the other stuff to keep your life
going outside work.

It can be done, but modern life guides people to a constant sedentary
lifestyle. Drive to work, sit at home in the evenings watching TV etc etc.

------
jostmey
Perhaps we have become too inactive. Perhaps only the fittest, healthiest
individuals made it into adulthood and therefore the population enjoyed long,
healthy lifespans. Perhaps our genomes have degraded without strong negative
selective pressure against human ailments.

But I doubt a new diet fad will be the elixir for longevity.

------
kingmanaz
The negative and dismissive comments here are enlightening. Progressivism (the
religion of many of the narcissistic STEM grads on HN) would appear to in
reality be a form of temporal parochialism; for this Star-Trekian religion to
function, the past simply _has_ to be worse than the present and future.

~~~
Chris2048
Can you tell me what you mean by "negative and dismissive"?

If negative includes perfectly valid criticism, then who cares? Dismissive?
Which comments?

Rather than generalising over this thread-tree, why not respond to some? It
seems a bit early for you to be invoking a stereotype.

------
crumbit
One issue which isn't discussed much is so-called 'mutational meltdown' from
about 1800 in England whereby the (good and laudable) improvements in public
health, child mortality and so forth has led to an increased burden of genetic
mutations with each generation.

------
RugnirViking
> They had relatively little access to alcohol

This seems very wrong from what I know about Victorian Britain

------
ebbv
If this is indeed true I'd imagine that most of the cause is diet based. Sugar
is good for hummingbirds, not people.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _I 'd imagine that most of the cause is diet based_

From the introduction:

 _Our recent research indicates that the mid-Victorians’ good health was
entirely due to their superior diet._

------
lawless123
what did they eat?

~~~
daviddavis
It's right there in the first paragraph:

> high intake of fruits, whole grains, oily fish and vegetables

------
fivestar
The article is not as focused on infant mortality as the post title suggests.

Am wondering about the statement regarding cancer being rare. Is that only
because people didn't live long enough?

I went to a Wal-Mart this past weekend, I know full well what is wrong with
contemporary health--excess eating!

~~~
bryanlarsen
"Is that only because people didn't live long enough?"

According to the article, their life expectancy after the age of 5 was
comparable to ours.

"excess eating"

According to the article, their calorific intake was approximately twice ours
because they expended so much more calories working & keeping warm. 3000
calories for a "sedentary" man, over 5000 for a labourer.

~~~
fivestar
It makes no sense unless we truly have way more carcinogens in our modern
world. Something doesn't add up--either the stats are skewed because modern
populations are so much larger, or record keeping was bad, or...something.

Also, you downvoted me, then posted "life expectancy after age 5" which, in my
thinking, only validates that article has little to do with "infant mortality"
since age 0-5 covers a wide band of people who are not infants, right?

