Dec 1(AZINS) Paleo is passé. The latest diet doing the rounds on the internet is the Victorian diet. Sounds so much more fancy than the rudimentary-sounding Paleolithic, innit? Well, there’s nothing fancy about the Victorian diet, apart from the sound of it. In fact, it’s more healthy than fancy!

What is it?

Recently, heath experts from the UK are recommending weight watchers to adopt a new healthier diet, the lesser known Victorian diet, which is akin to eating like their forefathers in the 19th century. The mid-Victorian era (1850 to 1872) has been dubbed as a ‘golden age of nutrition’, by Dr Judith Rowbotham, of the University of Plymouth, who co-authored research with Dr Paul Clayton of the Institute of Food, Brain and Behaviour.

“We found that working-class Victorians ate far more than we do to sustain them through long manual working days. Men consumed 4,000-5,000 calories daily, women around 3,000 calories, compared with an average of around 2,200 today. Yet obesity was virtually unknown except in the upper-middle and wealthier classes,” said Dr Clayton adding that “In addition, they typically ate eight to 10 portions of fruit and vegetables daily, in a diet that contained far higher levels of vitamins and minerals than occur in today’s nutrient-depleted, refined and processed foods. They also consumed less salt, sugar, alcohol and tobacco.”

Co-author Dr Judith Rowbotham, a historian specialising in the Victorian era, based at Nottingham Trent University, adds, “Salt was used only as a flavouring, not as a preservative - preserved meats such as corned beef didn’t become available until the late 1880s.’ Tobacco was chewed, used in snuff or you could roll your own, but cigarettes did not go on sale until the late 1880s and it was mainly the wealthier classes who could afford them.

Earlier, sugar which was a luxury of the upper classes became more widely available to the working classes, yet sugar was still rarely consumed by the commoners. Their diet was far higher in unrefined, fresh foods and the working classes consumed less-damaging foods, meaning that these people were healthier.

Now coming to bread, bread was always stone-ground made daily with large amounts of natural yeast, and the beer they drank was unfiltered and contained a lot of natural yeast. This natural yeast was the secret to their strong immune systems, she added. “Victorian foods were either made or unknowingly “contaminated” with yeasts that have recently been clinically proven in both animal and human studies to boost our innate immune function,” Dr Clayton said.

Is it advisable and practical?

Mom and child nutritionist Dhvani Shah opines that the Victorian diet is not advisable. "It’s not practical for one to have eight to 10 servings of fruits and vegetables a day. You need that much hunger to eat. Also, things like stone ground bread are not available anymore. India is not a bread eating country. We eat rotis and there’s no yeast in rotis. Last but not the least, we don’t do so much manual labour that we consume should 4,000 to 5,000 calories a day," adding, “The only plus points that I see in the diet is the restricted consumption of sugar, alcohol and salt.”

Go back to pre-Independence era

Clinical nutritionist Pooja Makhija says, “The Victorian Diet sounds very lovely. It’s nice to say to go back eating simple foods however, this one is not-so-practical. I’d rather tell my clients to go back to eating Indian rotis made from whole wheat, jowar, bajra, etc. This is better than the Victorian diet. So, instead of the Victorian era, go back to pre-Independence era.” Today, the pace of life is so fast, nobody has the time to make their own stone-ground bread or use natural yeast to make it. Today, at the click of a button, people order groceries and get it delivered to their doorstep, After being ‘spoilt’ for so many years, it’s not easy to go back to what our forefathers did, she reasons.
 
Paleo vs Victorian

Kanchan Patwardhan, clinical nutritionist consultant, Kanchan’s House of Health & Nutrition, and Arogya Hospital, agrees that the Victorian diet is better than the Paleo diet saying, “Since the Paleo diet comprises of only proteins. It is good to follow the Victorian Diet in comparison to the Paleo Diet.”

“I would pick neither. Having said that, this diet is better than the Paleo as it contains meat, and the Paleo Diet is meant for countries like America, Germany, Russia and not India,” says Shah. "The Paleo Diet is a high protein, low-carb diet that involves meat. Human bodies have evolved, our ancestors could digest that much amount of food, we are not metabolically or physiologically like them. Also, according to me, the Paleo Diet is impractical, having a lot of animal protein and very little carbs. I would never recommend the Paleo Diet to anyone," opines Makhija.

Want to try it?

"If one still wants to go ahead and try the diet, some modifications one would need to do is have whole grains be it pulses, sprouts, beans rather than just rotis made from flour. Also, looking at one’s body type and age, one would have to reduce his/her calorie intake," advises Shah adding that also, a lot of meat eaters face resistance to fat loss as animal protein offers resistance to fat-burning. “Our bodies are not like the ones that belonged to the Victorian era. Therefore, I don’t recommend changing your lifestyle to adapt to that era’s food habits. Rather than modifying to the Victorian Diet, learn from it by  indulging in more physical activity. Also, cut down on salt, sugar, refined and processed foods,” warns Makhija.