About fifteen years ago, it was popularly believed within the science communities that the first bicentennial person had already been born, and some of the recent breakthroughs suggest that most of us under 50 might really be able to achieve that.
Of course, that’s presuming that the stuff we’re eating isn’t killing us on a timescale that only the advances of curing the major diseases of today will make relevant.
It will be sad if we manage to cure all the diseases that prevent most of us from reaching 100, only to find out that the food we’re eating is what’s preventing most of us from going much past that. And honesty, I wouldn’t be surprised if it takes something like that before money is directed towards properly studying all our additives and pesticides to check for which ones are doing us in.
I personally beleive that the industrialized diet causes significant health issues much earlier than 100 and that is a contributing factor to diseases including heart conditions, diabetes and obesity, all of which can shorten life spans and reduce quality of life.
True. Those are probably some of the highest causes of deaths lately.
While medicinal advances should help with some of them, fixing your diet would do much more much faster.
And while the industrial design of modern processed foods is a problem, I think there the greater issue is a lack of education on healthy diets and habit formation.
Those two go hand in hand, many big food processors had a hand in developing food pyramids and nutritional guidelines. Processed food manufacturers also have very little rules about their advertisements and who they can advertise to, with a huge market being to kids. These companies try to hook kids on processed foods while they are young and their tastes are still developing, one of the biggest examples being the happy meal which includes a toy that is often part of a limited time set and adds incentive to get more happy meals.
