[psychometry]

People used to die when they were 35 because they were getting stomach cancer from a lifetime of eating salted meat. The invention of refrigeration was one of the most important public health accomplishments of the last 150 years.

[eloff]

No, salted meat wouldn't make a list of the top ten causes of mortality back then. I doubt even the top 100, but I can't say for certain without doing more work than a comment is worth.

Apparently lots of people disagree with something that seems obvious? Source?

[psychometry]

Do you honestly think that "salted meat" would be listed on a death certificate?

Here's a source for you: https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2008144

[eloff]

> Do you honestly think that "salted meat" would be listed on a death certificate?

Strawman argument.

So stomach cancer is currently 10% of cancer deaths, and cancer is currently the second leading cause of death at all ages. One can't extrapolate that back historically safely because cancer primarily affects the old and people didn't live long enough back then. But even if we just single out stomach cancer and assume incorrectly that 100% is attributed to salt, when frankly that would be a minority of stomach cancers, then it still wouldn't even make the top ten causes of mortality today. Never mind historically when people commonly died from lots of things we no longer worry about, like simple bacterial infections, childbirth, or poor dental hygiene.

The OPs argument is ridiculous and I'm surprised how many people can't see that.

[bloaf]

https://www.cancer.gov/news-events/cancer-currents-blog/2020...

Everything old is new again.

[layoutIfNeeded]

[citation needed]

[psychometry]

Ok: https://www.nature.com/articles/jhh2008144

[echelon]

Infant mortality is what brought the average lifespan down.

People also had harsher lives and were exposed to a wide variety of stressors, diseases, malnutrition, etc.

[bregma]

Life expectancy at birth, not lifespan.

[secabeen]

Life expectancy at birth is a worthless statistic to compare to when looking at modern humans. Infant mortality was so high that it distorts the numbers. A more useful statistic is the modal age of adult death, which peaks between 65 and 75 across most estimates, regardless of era: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1728-4457....

https://www.discovermagazine.com/health/when-did-humans-star...

[craftinator]

No, they died from being overly alkaline, from eating too many vegetables. Get your facts straight.