Derek J. Oddy – författare

Twentieth century Europe went through a dramatic transition from low income populations experiencing hunger and nutritionally inadequate diets, to the recent era of over-consumption and growing numbers of overweight and obese people. By examining the trends in food history from case studies across Europe, this book offers a historical context to explain how and why this transition has occurred and what we can learn in order to try and address the vitally important issues arising from obesity in contemporary Europe.

Originally published in 1985, Diet and Health in Modern Britain examines the changes in diet and health in Britain during the rapid social development of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It is particularly concerned with the ways in which the problems of urban life were ameliorated. How was infant and child mortality reduced? How did family life go on in conditions where income was low and sometimes intermittent, where protected water supplies and proper sanitation were not available, and where food preservation and food technology were still limited? How did the state devise diets for those in its care? What were the choices available for consumers?The contributors to this book were historians and nutritionists and this gives a strong interdisciplinary flavour to the volume. Many of the problems encountered during British urban development were being experienced in the developing world at the time. The way in which Britain coped with the health hazards of late-nineteenth-century urban squalor had much to tell those concerned with similar problems in contemporary cities in the developing world. The book makes clear that life in Britain in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries and life in the developing world at the time represented similar stages of the process of demographic transition.

The industrialization of food preservation and processing has been a dramatic development across Europe during modern times. This book sets out its story from the beginning of the nineteenth century when preservation of food from one harvest to another was essential to prevent hunger and even famine. Population growth and urbanization depended upon a break out from the ’biological ancien regime’ in which hunger was an ever-present threat. The application of mass production techniques by the food industries was essential to the modernization of Europe. From the mid-nineteenth century the development of food industries followed a marked regional pattern. After an initial growth in north-west Europe, the spread towards south-east Europe was slowed by social, cultural and political constraints. This was notable in the post-Second World War era. The picture of change in this volume is presented by case studies of countries ranging from the United Kingdom in the west to Romania in the east. All illustrate the role of food industries in creating new products that expanded the traditional cereal-based diet of pre-industrial Europe. Industrially preserved and processed foods provided new flavours and appetizing novelties which led to brand names recognized by consumers everywhere. Product marketing and advertising became fundamental to modern food retailing so that Europe’s largest food producers, Danone, Nestlé and Unilever, are numbered amongst the world’s biggest companies.

Twentieth century Europe went through a dramatic transition from low income populations experiencing hunger and nutritionally inadequate diets, to the recent era of over-consumption and growing numbers of overweight and obese people. By examining the trends in food history from case studies across Europe, this book offers a historical context to explain how and why this transition has occurred and what we can learn in order to try and address the vitally important issues arising from obesity in contemporary Europe.