[gcanyon]

I was just talking with my wife yesterday about how readily people assume they have superior competence to or greater insight than experts in a given field. I'm not picking on you in particular, but your comment jumped out at me.

Substantially:

We've been eating "low quality" food of one type -- ultra-processed food -- since at least the '60s, so what's your explanation for the recency of the effect?

And some time earlier than that -- very roughly the 1920s and earlier -- we were eating "low quality" foods of a different type: spoiled, adulterated, and questionably-sourced food products, so do you claim that we started with poor concentration then, got better/had a heyday in the mid-20th century, and now we're declining again?

In short: what's your evidence to support your claim?

[Emma_Goldman]

It's reasoned conjecture on an internet message board. Yes, it is over-stated. But if one treats quality of diet as one variable among many in cognitive capacity, which is the only sane approach, then trying to match the diet of a population to trendlines in society-wide cognitive performance is not going to tell you anything.