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

[Tara Sersen Boroson]

>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).
>  
>

Thank you thank you thank you!  I've been telling people this for 
years!  I did a study in an Ecology class about this.  From an Ecology 
class perspective, it was practice in sampling and statistics.  We went 
to cemetaries in the DE/MD/PA area that had gravestones dating back to 
the early 1700s.  We took data on birth and death dates and gender 
whenever it was apparent.  (A few names were indecipherable.)  What we 
found was that, throughout the time period from about 1700-1950ish, if 
you made it to the age of five you had a pretty darned good chance of 
making it to 20.  If you made it to 20, your chances of living a long 
life weren't much less than they are today.  The thing that skewed the 
"average" age of death downward was the childhood mortality rate.  There 
were also small spikes in male death during times of war.  Thus, while 
the "life expectancy" was somewhere around 40 (I can't remember 
exactly,) if you were 39 you really didn't stand a high chance of 
dropping dead the next year - and if you were 41, you hadn't beaten any 
odds.  There also wasn't a high rate of female death vs. male death 
during "childbearing" ages, despite the reputation of childbirth being 
such a risky process.

-Magdalena

-- 
Tara Sersen Boroson

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself. - Galileo Galilei