Undergraduate thesis attempts to show how people’s diet and attitudes towards food have changed over the 20th century in United Stated of America (US) and Europe and potential correlation between new, modern dietary habits and the rise of modern, chronic diseases. Industrial revolution, modernisation and globalisation have undoubtedly radically changed people's dietary models and loosen evolutionary bonds between humans and nature: people eat less and less natural, local and seasonal food, there are more and more industrially processed foods in our diet, seasonal and exotic foods are available to us all year round, we do not know food shortages, there is even too much food in developed countries. The key changes that led to today’s eating habits date back to the 1950s, when scientists in the US began looking for solutions to a new epidemic - heart disease. As the culprit, they saw saturated, animal fats, which gradually began to be replaced by vegetable oils and fats in the diet. The low-fat idea began to prevail, the proportions of animal fats and red meat in human diet gradually decreased drastically over the century. In the 1980s, the low-fat diet became a national strategy in the US and the first dietary guidelines began to emerge, which are the basis for all of today’s dietary guidelines. Unfortunately, dietary strategies have not yielded the desired results as modern, chronic diseases are rising sharply, which can be in part attributed to modern dietary habits and modern lifestyle.
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