Are You a Victim of Generational Malnutrition and if so Can Anything Be Done About It?

The news is suddenly full of stories about Ultra processed foods and their correlation to the many negative effects on our health and degenerative disease that are epidemic in the American public. But this has not just happened overnight.
In order to understand how we got here it’s important to check out some history of the American food supply.
According to the website ProgressiveGrocer.com, “In 1950, supermarkets accounted for 35 percent of food sales; by 1960, these stores sold 70 percent of food for home consumption. During the decade, the number of stores more than doubled — from 14,000 in 1950 to 33,000 in 1960.”
Following World War 2, soldiers returned home, married and started the Baby Boom, and families flocked to the suburbs. Supermarkets emerged and ended the daily drop off of milk from “the milkman” at your door, and butcher shops declined. More from ProgressiveGrocers.com:
“The 1950s saw a slew of advancements in product innovation, marketing and even technology. Here are a few highlights:
Plastic film and wrapping machines came onto the scene, making pre-packaged fruits and vegetables possible. While this increased grocers' labor costs, the convenience appealed to consumers and helped boost sales.
The meat department became a standard section at supermarkets. Dairy sections were rapidly moving to self-service, and some grocers dabbled in housewares and larger nonfood sections.”

In other words, convenience became King.

Another trend that happened was the decline of local family farms, and the rise of chemicals in household products.
 
Now let’s put this into the context of “Generations”. A generation lasts approximately 20 years or so. Starting with 1950 to the present, we are well into the fourth generation of processed and pre-packaged foods in supermarkets.

For a fascinating illustration of the effects of generational malnutrition, I will share with you a study done by Francis Pottenger, MD from 1932 to 1942 on cats he had been using for other research on adrenal function. Relying on donations of cooked and raw meat and milk products to feed the cats, Pottenger noticed that some cats were healthier than others. He decided to do a controlled study on the cats to see how the different diets would affect the cats.  One group of cats was fed 2/3 raw meat, 1/3 raw milk and cod liver oil. The other group was fed 2/3 cooked meat, 1/3 raw milk and cod liver oil. This was carried on for several generations. The results were startling.
The “raw food” cats lived normal and healthy lives and produced normal healthy kittens who also live normal and healthy lives for all of the generations.
The first generation of “cooked food” cats developed heart problems, nearsightedness and farsightedness, infections of the kidney, the liver, the lungs, the testes and ovaries, the bladder, arthritis and allergies in later life. The second generation of “cooked food” cats developed these conditions earlier in life. The third generation were either born with degenerative conditions or developed them as kittens and many did not survive until adulthood. There was no fourth generation because they had become unable to reproduce.

Regeneration
Pottenger wanted to see what would happen if the “cooked food” cats were then placed on the “raw food” diet. When cats of the first and second generation “cooked food” groups were returned to a raw meat diet, they gradually regained better health and it took about four generations to get back to normal health.

How does this correlate to humans?

When I was growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, there were no fertility clinics. Hardly anyone was overweight or obese. ADHD was not even a thing. Type 2 diabetes was rare and only in adults. Nobody I knew had heard of autoimmune diseases.

Fast forward to March of 2024, according to Molly Murray, President and CEO of the Autoimmune Association (established in 1991), the list of known autoimmune disorders has grown to over 100 and the number of children age 12-19 with some form of autoimmune disease has increased by 300%! It’s happening to younger and younger people. Several years ago I heard about a 2 year old with rheumatoid arthritis!
Currently around 15% of couples are infertile in the United States, according to the CDC.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) reports that “the past couple of decades have seen a continuous increase in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) diagnoses. National population surveys reflect an increase in the prevalence from 6.1% to 10.2% in the 20-year period from 1997 to 2016 and experts continue to debate and disagree on the causes for this trend”.
Remember how the cats in the second and third generations of cooked/processed food were switched to the natural raw food diet regained their health? In an upcoming blog I will highlight the topic of epigenetics and a study that shows how food can influence the genes you were born with.

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