Healthy Eating 9his diet book a lunch of “a bit of roasted poultry, a basin of good beef tea,
eggs poached...a sandwich – stale bread – and half a pint of good home
brewed beer” (cited in Burnett, 1989). In the US at this time, diets were
based around the staples of corn, rye, oats, and barley for making bread;
the use of molasses as a cheap sweetener; and a quantity of salt pork which
could survive the warmer weather in the absence of refrigeration. Blood
pudding was also a source of meat; it was made from hog or occasionally
beef blood and chopped pork, seasoned, and stuffed into a casing which
was eaten with butter crackers to provide a meal for the workers
(McIntosh, 1995). What constituted a healthy diet in the nineteenth
century was very different from current recommendations.
Concerns about the nation’s diet in the UK came to a head following
recruitment attempts during the Boer War at the beginning of the
twentieth century, when 38 percent of volunteers were rejected due to
malnutrition and poor health. This resulted in the establishment of the
Inter Departmental Committee on Physical Deterioration, and the pass-
ing of the Education Act in 1906 and the Medical Inspection Act in 1907,
introducing free school meals and free medical and dental checks for
children. The government also introduced parent education classes to
inform mothers about the nature of a healthy diet. In the US, the Great
Depression of the 1930s resulted in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New
Deal programs, the establishment of food subsidies, and the distribution
of surplus agricultural products to families and schools. Refrigeration and
canned foods also became more available at this time. Greater improvements
in the diets of many Western countries, however, mainly came about as a
result of the rations imposed during both the world wars. These rations
resulted in a reduction in the consumption of sweet foods and an increase
in the place of carbohydrates in the diet. In addition, the need to provide
the armed forces with safe and healthy food stimulated research into food
technology and established dietary standards.
Since this time there has been a proliferation of the literature on healthy
eating. A visit to any bookstore will reveal shelves of books proclaiming
diets to improve health through weight management, or salt reduction, or
a Mediterranean approach to eating, or the consumption of fiber. There is,
however, a consensus among nutritionists nowadays as to what constitutes
a healthy diet (Department of Health, 1991). Food can be considered
in terms of its basic constituents: carbohydrate, protein, alcohol, and fat.
Descriptions of healthy eating tend to describe food in terms of broader
food groups and make recommendations as to the relative consumption