I was interested in Gemmas's point (and other people's) that in pretty recent past everyone knew that starch and sugar made you fat. I managed to track down a copy of the book my Dad used to lose weight easily and successfully in the 60s. 'This slimming business' John Yudkin. He suggests units of 5g of carbohydrate, for ease of counting, and then suggest starting on 15 units, dropping until you start to lose weight. Is this familiar to anyone?

There was a recent TV programme here in the UK, 'the 1900 House', where a family lived as they would have done in 1900, for 3 months. They had to eat 1900 food. The butcher called, and when the mother started going on about pasta, he was horrified. In 1900, people got what they needed from meat and veg, cheese and eggs and fish too of course, and bread. But it looked very different from what the family ate these days.

In another thread, a post mentioned that the international cuisine which has been adopted in the UK anyway, is all starch: pasta and pizza and rice based food. Cheap, tasty, fast and easy.