[E]conomics cannot be purged of ideology... - John Komlos

Because the price of a calorie is much greater if purchased through meat... there was a tendency to substitute away from meat consumption during the early phases of industrialization. This caused the intake of protein... to fall, making it difficult... to fight off nutrition-sensitive diseases.

In the United States, beginning with the birth cohorts of the 1830s, adult male stature declined, by more than two centimeters. Men appear to have been quite underweight... an average... of 126 pounds... in their late teen-age years, even though... the economy was expanding rapidly... (between 1840 and 1870, per capita net national product increased by more than 40%). In the Hapsburg Monarchy, the decline in stature during the second half of the eighteenth century was between three and five centimeters. A similar pattern was found for industrializing Montreal. The birth weight of infants there fell after the 1870s, indicating that the nutritional status of mothers was declining.

[H]ousehold incomes... weren't going up. You don't need a Ph.D. in economics to figure out that something's not right with that.