Do we eat less well than before?

Awareness from the scientific world

According to Marc Dufumier, professor emeritus at AgroParisTech, there is an urgent need to change our way of farming and, through this, our diet. For him, any other behavior is criminal, any skepticism or waiting is not sensible.

The same goes for Claude Fischler, researcher at the CNRS and sociologist, who explains that at the beginning of the 20th century, poisonings represented the second cause of death. With dazzling progress in medicine and the taking into account of hygiene in the operating modes of food chains, life expectancy has skyrocketed in the 21st century. But for all that, the state of health of the world population is still not looking good .

Some explanations

Today, obesity kills more people than undernutrition . Overweight, which has become a class disease, affects a third of humanity. The trend is towards trivialization: at the level of our food it is an explosive correlation effect between GMOs associated with pesticides or other synthetic substances which make us say that we no longer know what our nutritional products are made of. .

With junk food, of course, everything is faster, easier to prepare, adapted to our hectic and stressful lives. However, the more societies are well nourished, the more the inhabitants worry about what they eat, not for fear of running out of food but more to know its composition. But this is not the case for all segments of the population: the most disadvantaged are not very interested in the composition of the products, hence the creation of an easy-to-identify color code .

So, even if from a health point of view, medical progress is substantial, it is clear that the relationship to food has changed: it has become individualized and we “impose” our eating habits on our guests. Everyone has their own requirements and recommendations, whether it is “gluten-free”, “vegetarian”, “organic”, “meat-free or sugar-free”.

Organic in the spotlight

Food imbalances are mainly linked to an overconsumption of fast sugars, saturated fatty acids and animal proteins. This creates problems of obesity but also of diseases of civilization such as diabetes or cardiovascular diseases. Industrial agriculture, even if it makes it possible to eat quickly at little cost, represents a real danger in the medium and long term. This gives toxic food, which poisons our bodies slowly. We ingest an exaggerated amount of antibiotics and heavy metals from animal products such as meat or fish that make us bioresistant or even mutated.

This worries doctors. But consumers from new generations are putting pressure on manufacturers who are gradually complying with the requirements of traceability and transparency. Doesn’t Coca-Cola make antioxidant-based smoothies? Of course, there is still work to be done, but the discourse is changing .

Thus, more and more scientific studies show that endocrine disruptors and pesticides, even ingested in small quantities, will trigger neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s or Alzheimer’s in the youngest as well as certain cancers such as prostate or breast for example. And that on average ten years earlier than now.