I remember reading that the number one cancer ~100 years ago (e.g 1920's era) was stomach cancer.
The thinking was that everyone ate pickled or canned foods due to a lack of refrigeration. This in turn led to the stomach cancer.
I mention this in conversation when people talk about food being "better" back in the day.
It's also a reminder that "it's not the poison, it's the dose". Fermented/pickled foods are probably good for your gut biome up to some threshold but then can begin to have negative effects.
I have to check sources on this but to my recollection, the biggest reason for stomach cancer historically has been infection by Helicobacter pylori, which for decades caused duodenal/stomach ulcers in many adults with doctors only treating the symptoms instead of the underlying cause (the bacteria), because they simply didn't know how common it was as a cause of this problem. After Barry Marshall and Robin Warren showed in 1982 how it caused peptic ulcers, treatments for ulcers changed and gastric cancer rates fell from what I remember. Those two doctors even won a nobel prize for their discovery.
Life expectancy was worse, for reasons of awful (compared to now) child mortality and also because many other major diseases killed people before they could get the cancers of old age that today skew so many cancer statistics towards higher prevalence. Despite this, cancer was no stranger to the 1930s, and treatment options were virtually non-existent if it did arrive.
Furthermore, antibiotics simply didn't exist, so goodbye life or in the better case, limb, if even minor infections became bad. It was largely a firm understanding of germ theory that prevented more infection deaths at the time. Beyond that, Life expectancy in general ranged from just over 57 years in 1929 to only 63 years by the mid 1930s.
Despite your flippant claim about "processed shit" being at fault for our supposedly awful modern life, you'd generally be much better off and much healthier today, even if your diet isn't entirely perfect. Also worth mentioning: the most common causes of death during the depression were: "cardiovascular and renal diseases, cancer, influenza and pneumonia, tuberculosis, motor vehicle traffic injuries, and suicide". These were major problems then and even now some of them remain major problems just like then despite fewer processed popular diet options at that time.
you don’t have to buy processed food, what people ate 100 years ago is still readily available
life expectancy actually went up by about 6 years over the great depression (early 60s), and is generally better during recessions (though the suicide rate also goes up). Some speculation is that people work less and sleep more, have less money to spend on alcohol and other vices, and there are fewer workplace injuries
> “Vegetables are extraordinarily rich in nutrients and beneficial phytochemicals,” he reported. “They are still there, and vegetables and fruits are our best sources for these.”
Regardless, it's somewhat avoidable by buying produce from local sources or from organic farms.
Much more human effort went into making food back then. Our food is much cheaper than in the past.
(Assuming you live in the US and are middle-class.) You can eat heathy if you want to. It's your choice what you eat. You can choose to only buy unprocessed food and make everything from scratch. You can bring your own meals with you when you travel away from your home.
The fact that we have fresh vegetables imported from thousands of miles away, and plenty of frozen (but otherwise minimally-processed) food means you can have a better diet than back then. It's all about your choices.
I went to college in the late 70's, I was 6'5" and weighed 180. Then again my metabolism was crazy. Now I weigh 215. Clearly my one data point proves all...
Average lifespan actually increased during the decade before and the decade after the great depression too, so it looks like involuntary fasting had zero to do with it.
