Nutrition Transition for Better or Worse

Our Western health and hygienic insights have drastically reduced infant mortality since the 19th century. In the Far East and Africa, not everyone has clean drinking water and their own sanitary facilities. Large differences, on the other hand, are found worldwide in cancer deaths, which are spectacularly lower in India, China and Japan. An increasing proportion of animal proteins and fats in the diet in the West is the cause of this.

Most of diseases in the temperate zones came in Western countries from diseases of our livestock (such as cattle, pigs, and chickens) with which our ancestors lived in close contact after those animal species had been domesticated. Diseases as plague and cholera can be controlled with antibiotics, the leukemia viruses ALV and BLV are much more difficult or even inadequate to treat.