Affluence
So how does Affluence enter into this? How wealthy we are certainly should have an impact on what we eat.
First there are two ways to consider how Affluent we are; Personal Affluence, and Societal Affluence. Personal affluence determines how much available income we have to purchase our food. This can impact on the quality of food one chooses, the quantity one has available to eat, and the availability and frequency of consumption of specialty items (treats).
If you examine the typical food basket that is available to those who must turn to Food Banks in order to eat, what is in the hamper they receive? Bread, crackers, boxed macaroni, dry spaghetti, canned goods.... Carbohydrates, in other words. As personal affluence rises, does this change significantly? Amazingly, not really. Gourmet pastas may substitute for Kraft Dinner; whole grain breads for Wonder bread, but that shopping cart is bound to contain Twinkies, potato chips, soft drinks, candy, cookies, cakes.... As our disposable income rises, we tend to broaden our consumption of these items, and they are all carbohydrates. People with higher levels of disposable income may well eat more meat than the poor, but they are unlikely to diminish the high number of carbohydrates that they consume. The net effect is that we all - all of us - eat a diet
that is not properly balanced for the nature of the body that we have inherited from our ancestors.
Societal affluence is a more curious element. First, the availability of a growing amount of expendible income over the past two hundred years has promoted the growth of the food processing industry, which is based entirely on carbohydrate-based products. In particular, that money has led to the growth of the consumption of sugar, and to the improvements in milling that have yielded finer and finer grades of flour, which in turn increases the amount of carbohydrate being digested by the average person.
The Industrial Revolution accelerated the social changes that began with the Agricultural Revolution. Agriculture benefitted from many of the concepts that drove Manufacturing, such as specialization of labour, and the development of machines, which resulted in fewer and fewer farmers producing more and more food. To appease the Urban masses, governments throughout the western world have done the same thing: subsidize the grain industry. As a consequence, farmers produce enormous quantities of grain, at subsidized prices, which is sold into the food processing industry at prices that are significantly deflated. The result of this? Those twinkies you buy do not cost nearly as much as they should, which means you can afford to eat more of them, more often.