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Comment by avani | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised this statistic isn't brought out more in articles that call cancer, heart disease, etc. diseases of the developed world vs. the modern world, the difference being that instead of living in a pure time of organic everything, many people simply didn't live long enough to develop our modern diseases.

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The way we eat in the 'developed world' is not necessarily the reason that people are living longer. Advances in medicine, sanitation, personal hygiene, etc probably have played a larger role.

That said, being in 'the developed world' doesn't necessarily mean that we are eating worse than in previous years. IIRC, the Irish Potato Famine happened because most of the farmers in Ireland ate a diet that mostly consisted of potatoes, so they were starving when the crops were bad (I believe the potatoes that they grew for themselves were different than the ones they grew for the land-owners, and it was the type of potato that they grew for personal food that suffered causing starving farmers). I can't imagine that a diet that largely consists of potatoes is necessarily healthier than eating McDonald's everyday. Just saying...

Actually, you could survive solely on a diet of potatoes and milk, with all the essential nutrients provided - http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2828/could-i-surviv... (This includes more potato famine info as well).

I doubt fries and a shake would work as well. Then again, maybe it's just evolving 'essential nutrients' to 'essential nutrients with optional cholesterol'.

IIRC, the life expectancy of people who lived past 40 hasn't changed much in the last few thousand years. Early life expectancies were low due to childbirth (for women) and accidents + infections (for men). If you reached old age, then you were likely to hang around until cancer or heart disease got you; the same as today.

Cancer treatments and heart pills extend people's old age a little, but I'd imagine that modern diets (increased meat consumption and refined carbs) take their toll.

That's often asserted, but what evidence I've read about leans the other way. E.g.:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-among-i... http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/mortality-and-...

There is very good evidence for short lifespans until quite recently, including the remaining bones from Pleistocene times. Much of the evidence is reviewed in The Nature of Paleolithic Art,

http://www.amazon.com/Nature-Paleolithic-Art-Dale-Guthrie/dp...

a book full of interesting information on how our ancestors lived.

That does sound interesting.

Stephan Guyenet also discusses some of the literature at http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/03/paleopathology... and http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/08/life-expectanc...

Uhm, that article says that the average life expectancy for inuit, not counting infant mortality was 43.5 years old. Sure, some of the people lived to older ages, but it's hardly the apples to apples comparison they're trying to make.

"Keep in mind that the Westerners who were developing cancer alongside them probably had a similar life expectancy at the time." I don't have figures for that exact comparison, but grabbing _A Farewell to Alms_ off my bookshelf, it's got for England, 1750-99: life expectancy at 20: 34 (i.e. living till 54). That's not dramatically different. (Looking at the graph, I think "excluding infant mortality" means to take life expectancy from age 4 instead of 20, though I haven't checked.)

Infant mortality doesn't obviously bear on how common cancer is among adults.

An average 10 years longer life expectancy is huge.

The question we started with: are so-called diseases of civilization caused by something about lifestyle, or is it people living longer revealing an underlying rate that's screened off by early death in the other cultures? These figures say there were plenty of older people; usually when I see the latter claim made it lumps in infant mortality. On the other hand, the reported differences in rates of things like cancer are huge.

Also, the 10 years leaves out age 4-20 mortality, if I understand it right.

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