Looking back through history, Americans weren't healthier than they are now. 'The past was actually much worse.'

During many decades in U.S. history, rich men smoked and
heavy alcohol consumption was 'the norm.' (Adobe Stock photo)

The American diet was once dominated by vegetables and dried fruits, but also salted pork and heavy alcohol consumption. Lifestyle practices in the United States have never been particularly healthy. Any models that promote "making America healthy again" aren't taking the country's health history into account, reports Gina Kolata of The New York Times. "The word 'again' presumes a time in the country’s past when Americans were in better health. Was there ever really a time when America was healthier?"

Medicine historians have "a short answer," Kolata writes. "'No,' said Nancy Tomes, a historian at Stony Brook University. . . . John Harley Warner, a historian at Yale, said, 'It’s hard for me to think of a time when America, with all the real health disparities that characterize our system, was healthier.'"

Going back in time, the vision of a more vibrant and healthy America evaporates. Throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, "rich men smoked cigarettes and cigars, the poor chewed tobacco. Heavy drinking was the norm," Kolata adds. "Fresh fruits and vegetables were in short supply because they were difficult to ship and because growing seasons were so short. As for protein, Americans were relying on salted pork."

Even when beef became part of the U.S. diet, Americans did not get healthier. Many people were underweight and their health suffered because of it. "The start of the 20th century saw public health improvements (cleaner water, for example, and posters advising parents not to give their babies beer), but the disease was rampant," Kolata reports. "When the 1918 flu struck the nation, no one knew the cause — the flu virus had not been discovered."

During the 1950s and 1960s, the "American pharmaceutical industry pumped out new medical advances: antibiotics, antipsychotics, drugs for high blood pressure and vaccines for tetanus, diphtheria, measles and polio," Kolata writes. "Despite that progress, those years were terrible for health," Dr. Jeremy Greene, a historian at Johns Hopkins University, said, "with 'a tremendous amount of heart attacks and strokes.'. . . In part, that was because nearly everyone smoked."

When it comes to optimum health, the United States is nowhere near the promised land, but the number of smokers has steeply declined while treatments for diseases have multiplied. "Researchers are quick to acknowledge that Americans’ health is not as good as it can be. And they bemoan the huge disparities in health care in this country," Kolata adds. "But, historians say, the past was actually much worse."