Back to the pre-industrial age? FAOSTAT statistics of food supply reveal radical dietary changes accompanied by declining body height, rising obesity rates, and declining phenotypic IQ in affluent Western countries

Summary

This paper uses FAOSTAT food supply statistics to argue that low-fat dietary recommendations introduced in the late 1970s and early 1980s drove substantial shifts in Western diets — notably reductions in red meat and egg consumption, increased reliance on cereals and poultry, lower average protein quality, and a higher overall glycaemic load. The author correlates these dietary changes with population-level declines in average body height, rising obesity rates, and downward trends in phenotypic IQ, drawing on meta-analytic evidence that challenges the assumed link between saturated fat and cardiovascular disease risk. The paper contends that the nutritional quality of Western diets has deteriorated markedly since the pre-industrial baseline in ways that may have measurable consequences for human physical and cognitive development.

UK applicability

The UK adopted low-fat dietary guidelines broadly in line with other Western nations during the same period, and the FAOSTAT data used likely includes UK food supply figures; the findings are therefore directly relevant to UK nutrition policy debates, particularly ongoing discussions about dietary fat, ultra-processed foods, and public health outcomes.

Key measures

Food supply data (kcal/capita/day by food group); protein quality indices; glycaemic load; average adult body height (cm); obesity prevalence (%); phenotypic IQ scores over time

Outcomes reported

The study examined long-term FAOSTAT food supply statistics across affluent Western countries to assess changes in dietary composition following the introduction of low-fat dietary guidelines in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and correlated these changes with population-level trends in body height, obesity prevalence, and phenotypic IQ scores.

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