1900 and 2000

While reading Marion Nestle's, "Food Politics : How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, there was one thing that stood out to me the most. This happened to be one particular table that compared the top ten diseases from 1900 and 2000. This table was quite interesting to me because, although they were different diseases, the cause of mostly all of them had one common factor; food and diet. The text talked of how in the early 20th century, people would catch disease that were made worse by the lack of peoples' food intake. The poor were especially effected by this. Nestle also states that, because of this problem, the average life expectancy was only a mere 47 years old. Personally, I found this to be quite unsettling. This is something that should not be such a large problem for such a strong nation. It should not have taken 100 years to help fix the problem. I guess with the Great Depression  and the two world wars it would have stalled the correction of this problem but, after these events, the economy was on the up and up. 

Although in the 20th century the lack of food was the problem, when the 21st century hit it was the opposite. The diet of most people was anything but healthy. People were starting to eat more and more unhealthy foods which, in turn, led to many of these people to develop diseases of the heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, and many more. Nestle states how even though that the government may want people to eat less, they cannot say that because it would harm the food producers. This is an interesting view. This is because the food industry has become such a large business in America that if citizens were to start to eat less of the junk food that they love, these businesses would lose out on a ton of money and perhaps it may even lead to job cutbacks.