snarky remarks about eating habits Re: [Sca-cooks] Sweet potatoes

[James Prescott]

At 14:46 -0500 2003-11-27, Dan Phelps wrote:
> Was written:>
>> It was frequently diagnosed; it just couldn't be TREATED. Furthermore, the
>> relationship to heart disease has been known for centuries. It was the
>> pathophysiology that connected the two that was missing. Type I diabetics
> do
>> tend to die young, but most type II diabetics don't even develop overt
>> disease until the 5th decade of life (although that's becoming younger and
>> younger in modern America).
> 
> With all due respect to the good Doctor would seem likely to me that given
> the short life expectancy pre-1600 that most type II diabetics didn't live
> to see the onset of the overt symptoms of the disease.


Misled by statistics.  Yes, the 'life expectancy' was low.  But that's
the _average_ life expectancy.  Weighted down by all those childhood
deaths.  People who survived to age 20 had a moderately good chance of 
living to a respectable old age (whatever that is).


Here for the town of Lynn in England for the period 1272-1460 are 
data for the age at death of men with wills who became involved in 
some capacity in town administration:

Begin quote:

The evidence for birth and death dates discussed above has been used in conjunction with all other available information for each individual, but because of the unavoidable imprecision involved, birth dates have in most cases been estimated to the nearest half-decade, and age estimates are therefore given in terms of a five-year span. The statistics thus available, for 170 of the total 473 Lynn office-holders, suggest an average life-span within the 57-62 years range, breaking down thus: 

age	30-35	35-40	40-45	45-50	50-55	55-60	60-65	65-70	
no. of
persons	2	5	8	11	24	32	44	24	
% *	99	98	95	90	84	70	51	25	

70-75	75-80	80-85
9	9	2
11	6	1* (rounded off and cumulative in reverse order) 

End quote (http://www.trytel.com/~tristan/towns/mc5_pt1.html)


That is, from this group of men, the better-off town dwellers who
had already survived to age 30, and who might perhaps (a) have taken 
better care of themselves and conversely (b) have been able to afford 
larger amounts of sugar in their diet if they had wished, fully  half 
lived to be over age 60.

Even if this group of persons is not fully representative of medieval
Europe in general, and even if huge numbers of people died before the
age of 30, it says that there were still plenty of folks over 50
with a chance to exhibit signs of type II diabetes.


Thorvald