The history of mankind is replete with legends and preconceptions about what can eat and what can not. What will happen in the future? In the 1860s, there was only one diet, the Banting diet. She presented a corpulent English undertaker William Banting, which is clearly treated better than he deserved. His diet became the first popular diet. Banting insisted on reducing consumption of starchy and sweet carbohydrates and increasing meat consumption to 170 grams per day - but not pork, because they thought that it contained carbohydrates. And all this soaked in two or three glasses of good Bordeaux.
Since the time of Banting, the number of popular diets has increased significantly. There were a lot of miracle foods, weight-loss tricks and some secret ingredients, but how many of them really changed the process of our food consumption?
Why do the recommendations of “good” and “bad” food always change?
At the heart of science is one important fact: there is nothing “proven” at 100%, and the same goes for dietetics. What is being demonized now, perhaps, will form the basis of a healthy diet next year, will open up new spaces for research to scientists.
Remember when eggs were considered the creation of the devil for their cholesterol content? Then in 1995, the study showed that even if there are two eggs a day, there will be no negative consequences for the risk of developing cardiovascular diseases. Eggs also contain many other good things, protein, vitamins, minerals, so now they are highly recommended for use.
Butter also caused a panic in the 1980s, when they learned about cholesterol and saturated fats, and its popularity dropped sharply in favor of margarine. Then everyone began to worry more about transfats in margarine.
Is there perfect food?
It would be great if we could eat everything we want, and then fix all the problems with a handful of blueberries or walnuts. But our preoccupation with perfect food is completely different from the principles of healthy eating, says nutritionist Rosemary Stanton.
“Preoccupation with perfect food is just one of the signs of an endless search for a magic wand that will solve all problems,” she says. “This approach, which ignores the multifactorial nature of nutrition-related health problems, is perhaps one of the biggest myths.”
Today, the best approach is to maintain a balanced diet and regular exercise.
“Enriched foods” and nutraceuticals: what is it?
Since the thought that certain nutrients are “useful” to us has crept into our heads, the food industry is working on the production of food that will contain the increased importance of these substances. This may be bread enriched with folic or nicotinic acid, salt with iodine and margarine with vitamin D. Such food leads the thread from medicine to food, and adding nutrients allows the manufacturer to talk about the increased benefits of the product, which is not always true.
Stanton sees this as a simple and self-serving distraction from really healthy food: fresh food.
Strangely enough, the idea of artificial food is attributed to the 19th century French chemist Marcelain Berthelot, and it led to the prediction of the future chemical era. In one of the articles published in 1896, the author maximizes Berthelot's thoughts and argues that the nutrients in a steak can be easily consumed along with a small pill.
What does the gastronomic future prepare for us?
Fans of science fiction may recall the 1973 film "Soylent Green", in which the population eats on a special diet, including the mysterious "green soylent." The climax of the film reveals the true ingredient: people. And despite its sinister origins — or perhaps in homage to the film — Soilent is currently available as a product that, according to the statement, contains all the proteins, carbohydrates, fats and trace elements our body needs, in the form of a drink or the bar. True, this is achieved by abandoning crunchy apples, medium-fried steaks, fresh slices of bread or cheese.
Another classic of science fiction, Logan's Flight, hints that future food will come from the sea, not from the land. At present, oceans already provide 16% of our total protein intake, but at the same time there is a growing interest in several less obvious sources of nutrients from the marine environment, such as algae.
Spirulina, a type of algae, has long been on the list of healthy foods, but interest in other green seafood is constantly growing, since microalgae, according to research, contains an excellent composition of the right kinds of fats, proteins and carbohydrates. It is believed that algae are less environmentally harmful alternative to cereals.
The article is based on materials .
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