Eating Habits of the Past vs. Now

[lindylady]

I think it's a combination of additives in the food, mass comsumption of processed salty/greasy/sugary junk, stress, lack of exercise, and modern lifestyle. You can manipulate one variable, but that won't change the whole picture. We have to find a way of placing all of these factors in balance. And the way this society moves so fast, it may not be a possibility.

 

[Fletch]

I seem to recollect reading of people early in the 20th century eating pancakes in a much broader context than breakfast. Some writer (E.B. White?) lunched on a stack with a side of vegetable soup during one essay. Duncan Hines also recommended them as dinner in one old Pennsylvania hotel, by way of decrying the postwar habit of eating steak everywhere one could.

 

[52Styleline]

In the early 1950's meat and potatos ruled the american dinner plate. Grocery stores carried pound buckets of lard, and that was the cooking oil of choice. Pie or cake was expected for desert. There were plenty of snack foods available - potato chips, cookies (biscuits across the pond). Bread was white and processed. Breakfast nearly always meant bacon, eggs, and hotcakes with plenty of syrup...and this was how most of the poor ate.

What was the difference? People moved. As has been said by others, fewer people held desk jobs and more people did work requiring hard physical exertion. Most women were homemakers, but housework was physically hard. For example, doing the laundry in the days before automatic washers was a physically demanding job. Although TV was certainly around, it didn't monopolize people's time. There were town team baseball games, and basketball games...more people fished and hunted..People walked in the evenings and visited their neighbors. Even driving the cars of that era was a physical workout...My 52 Chevrolet proves that to me every time I drive it. My Father was a logger and my Grandfather was a farmer...neither of them ever had a weight problem although both were robust eaters...