Why is it so hard to eat a good, old-fashioned cheeseburger anymore? We blame the nutrients, of course.
- Sep 3
- 3 min read
Updated: 6 days ago
This Article Is Available In
Remember the good ol' days? When a potato was a potato and an egg was just an egg? It sounds like a joke, but if you look at how we talk about food now, it’s all about the invisible stuff inside. Things like cholesterol, saturated fat, and fiber began to elbow their way onto packaging, pushing humble foods right off the label. It was as if someone decided a carrot wasn't a carrot, but a delivery system for beta-carotene and antioxidants. This shift from simple foods to complex nutrients started back in the 80s, and it changed the way we think about what we put in our bodies.
Back in the day, scientists like Justus von Liebig—the guy who basically invented the modern concept of nutrients—thought they had cracked the code of what we needed to eat. He believed that if you gave people the right mix of protein, fat, and carbs, that was all they needed. He even cooked up the first baby formula based on this idea. But it turns out, real life is a little more complicated than a chemistry textbook. Sailors were still getting sick on long voyages, even with all their nutrients, and babies weren't thriving. Why? Because the scientists were missing some key ingredients.
That's when vitamins entered the scene, a new type of "magic molecule" that could cure diseases like scurvy almost overnight. The discovery of vitamins made nutritional science feel like a superstar, and soon, people started to believe these invisible compounds held the secret to a long, healthy life. But this fascination with the magic of single nutrients led us down a winding path away from something much simpler, a path that was about to get a whole lot more political.
