Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 6(3), 1235-1253; doi:10.3390/ijerph6031235
Article

How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died

Paul Clayton 1,* email and Judith Rowbotham 2 email
1 School of Life Sciences, Oxford Brookes University, UK 2 Department of History & Law, Nottingham Trent University, UK † This paper is an extended re-working of three papers published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine [1-3]
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Received: 9 February 2009 / Accepted: 28 February 2009 / Published: 20 March 2009
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Public Health: Feature Papers)
PDF Full-text Download PDF Full-Text [138 KB, uploaded 20 March 2009 13:24 CET]
Abstract: Analysis of the mid-Victorian period in the U.K. reveals that life expectancy at age 5 was as good or better than exists today, and the incidence of degenerative disease was 10% of ours. Their levels of physical activity and hence calorific intakes were approximately twice ours. They had relatively little access to alcohol and tobacco; and due to their correspondingly high intake of fruits, whole grains, oily fish and vegetables, they consumed levels of micro- and phytonutrients at approximately ten times the levels considered normal today. This paper relates the nutritional status of the mid-Victorians to their freedom from degenerative disease; and extrapolates recommendations for the cost-effective improvement of public health today.
Keywords: Public health; dietary shift; degenerative disease; Victorian

Article Statistics

Click here to load and display the download statistics.

Cite This Article

MDPI and ACS Style

Clayton, P.; Rowbotham, J. How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 6, 1235-1253.

AMA Style

Clayton P, Rowbotham J. How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. 2009; 6(3):1235-1253.

Chicago/Turabian Style

Clayton, Paul; Rowbotham, Judith. 2009. "How the Mid-Victorians Worked, Ate and Died." Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 6, no. 3: 1235-1253.

Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health EISSN 1660-4601 Published by MDPI AG, Basel, Switzerland RSS E-Mail Table of Contents Alert