THE RECIPE FOR DEMOCRACY? THE SPREAD OF EUROPEAN DIET AND POLITICAL CHANGE

2016. No. 70.

Shcherbak A.

The paper aims to reveal the relationship between improvement in human diet and transition to democracy. The spread of a ‘European diet’ – the diet with historically unprecedented high proportion of animal proteins in daily calories intake – is likely to be one of the factors of regime change since 1992. In contrast to other studies, I regard European diet as an outcome of long historical transformation and show that improvement in nutrition preceded regime change. To get data on nutrients consumption around the world I apply to the Food balance sheets data from FAOSTAT. Based on this data I are able to define a European diet as the one containing animal protein-rich items (mostly, meat and dairy), alcohol beverages and sugar. Using OLS, factor analysis and SEM I test the direct and indirect effects of the European diet on the chance of transition to democracy and find positive impact of improvement in diet on political change. My findings reveal that improvement in diet affects democratization, but not vice versa.

Keywords: демократизация, values, ценности, democracy, питание, diet, animal proteins, животные белки

Publication based on the results of: Эволюционная теория модернизации: новые наработки в методах и содержании (2016)