how did people back in the old days stay so thin and lean?

[Justdog]

Walking

I don't know if you forgot to mention it or not...but non-modified hierloom seeds are still available for a variety of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. you can find them online quite easily. I never knew that you could find so many varieties of tomatoes! I wish I had room to garden, so thank God for CSA's! :eusa_clap
It seems to me that we no longer take pride in cooking a meal, or growing a vegetable, or take time to really savor the subtle flavors in a stew. Food these days seems to be something that we consume as much as we can of while paying as little as possible for...all while on the go. Unless you're a foodie or a chef or something along those lines, appreciation for a homecooked meal at the dinner table isn't really a priority.
On a personal note, I've been trying to lose weight for the last year by altering my lifestyle and my habits. I've found that I'm successful in reducing my waist size when I'm aware of what and when I'm eating instead of eating whatever is available on the fly. By my grandmothers' example, I've begun to try to eat on small plates, sit down at the dinner table to eat, and walk to as many places as possible. It's really hard to go from veritable couch potato junk food addict to cooking meals and walking to as many places as possible...but the pay off has been worth it.
Also, it was probably easier for folks "back then" to get extra exercise in during the day as the neccessities were probably within walking distance. Growing up, I lived in tract housing that was so far away from grocery stores, movie theatres, or anything else that we had to drive everywhere. These days I'm lucky enough to live in a neighborhood where everything is within walking distance. I much prefer this lifestyle than being subjected to having to drive everywhere and pay scandalous prices for gas.
When I lived in Russia in 1996-97, I lost 40 pounds in seven months because I walked EVERYWHERE. To school, to the bus station, to the bakery...everywhere. But everything was so close, so I didn't NEED to have a car. My meals consisted of high starch foods like potatoes, beets, carrots and pasta...and very little meat. Also fresh vegetables and the occasional fruit in the spring/summer. But it was all natural, grown in some babushka's garden, and it was necessary to have that starch to keep you walking. I tried to stay on that diet when i got back here, and...well. It didn't work without the walking everywhere.
Anyway. Wow...I've said a lot. *retreats to lair* lol

Walking the very underated excercise.

 

[Justdog]

Thinner Healthier?

My goodness! You all have a very rosy view of food of the past! It's true that meat didn't have hormones, but it did have nitrates, nitrites, and all sorts of other noxious chemicals at levels far greater than we use now to keep it from spoiling--refrigerators where nowhere near universal pre WWII.

Meats were higher in saturated fat, and as already pointed out, fresh vegetables were pretty much only available during the season. The rest of the year it was canned, canned, canned! *See above for notes on noxious substances used for preservatives.

People were thinner, but certainly not healthier--think back a generation or two in your own family and you'll no doubt come across quite a number who had heart attacks, strokes and cancer at very young ages, in part due to the high amount of cholesterol consumed and the processing of foods. (I have a friend who is a cancer researcher who said that changes in the way we preserve food now has practically eliminated stomach cancer!) Not that we today don't have plenty of diseases associated with obesity, but our grandparents weren't paragons of nutritional virtue, either.

I think general consensus in the medical community for thinner people of the past is--smaller portions, more exercise, less high fructose corn syrup, which is truly evil stuff.

Excellent point , leaner is not necessarily a reflection of good health.

 

[LordJohnRoxton]

My great grandmother cooked with lard... every meal, every day of her life. She lived to ripe old age of 103. It is odd that people point out to so many of the things my forebearers did as unhealthy when they all lived long, active lives.
Certainly those who came before us were alot more active in their every day lives... that's why we have to look for things to keep us active! As far as thinness goes... at least as far as the men in my family go, the last 2 generations have produced the thinnest men our family has seen. In general... up until the twentieth century the men in my family were quite robust. Not obese, but active and healthy... but then they weren't laborers either. Size seems to have denoted social class through the nineteenth century at least.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Just rereading this thread, I notice that one key point raised hasn't really been elaborated upon -- the issue of snacking. The nationwide snack food industry, as we know it today, didn't exist prior to the fifties -- you didn't go into a grocery store and find entire aisles full of chips and puffs and other assorted salty greasy things in bags.

Prior to the baby-boom era, you'd serve potato chips at a picnic or a barbecue, or have a small bag at the carnival, but they weren't something the average family kept on hand in the house, and they certainly weren't something you'd eat every evening while sprawled on the couch. The same is true of snack cakes -- while Twinkies and such do date back to the pre-war era, they were considered a luxury and an occasional treat, and not something you'd buy in bulk for daily consumption. A visitor from 1939 would gawk in amazement at the amount of empty snacking people do today.

Even when I was growing up in the sixties and seventies the snack aisle in the grocery store was maybe half the size it is now. Snacking is a huge business, and global business empires exist solely to cram more and more of this stuff down our gullets. And when was the last time you heard a mother yell to her kids, "PUT THAT DOWN -- YOU'LL SPOIL YER SUPPER?"

 

[univibe88]

That's an easy answer. The food they ate wasn't saturated with High Fructose Corn Syrup - as the first ingredient of every product!

That one ingredient has caused a major shift in human metabolism over the years; look around you - what you see is the effect of HFCS in everything we eat.

-dixon cannon

I've recently started realized just how awful HFCS is and decided to avoid it in my diet, and especially in my children's. When you start reading labels, it's shocking how many things contain it. Yogurt - loaded with it. Baked goods - you bet. Try finding hot dog buns without it. They say it helps the bread brown. Cereal, BBQ sauce, the list goes on and on.

That being said, I've become a label reader and I avoid it. I joke with my wife that my new diet is the "no label diet." I try to eat and cook with things that don't have labels. If it doesn't have a label, it's wholesome and healthy and I can eat as much as I want!

 

[Miss 1929]

... and softdrinks and sweets were not invented.

Hello? Coca Cola has been a HUGE seller since the 1890s! Where have you been?

And everyone always has loved sugar in whatever form they could get it. Sugar consumption took a huge leap over the whole world after the "discovery" of the Americas, where sugar cane grows. That was the largest cash crop in much of the early settlements.

I think the car has the most to do with it - followed by the processed foods - and I don't mean processed like in the 20s and 30s, where it was a matter of pre-prepared foods, but as in these days, poyunsaturated fats, corn syrup in everything.

Interestingly, that picture of rations doesn't seem too far off the mark for a diet - if supplemented by all the fruits and vegetables you would have grown in your Victory garden, and canned for winter use. Lots of sugar, notice, for the tea - and not nearly enough tea for me! 1 egg? That would be difficult.

 

[Miss 1929]

And who says they were so thin anyway?

Movie stars certainly were and are...but that wouldn't be a true representation of the masses.
But there's an awful lot of advertising for "reducing diets, excercise programs, Perfo-Lastic reducing girdles (saw one on Ebay the other day) and the like!
A common misconception is that because most of the vintage clothing on the market is small, the people must have been small. My theory is that those items were grown out of and languished in the closet or trunk until the estate sale. Like my closet, which ranges from size 2 to 16... Also, people have been collecting and wearing out the vintage since 1976, hen it really took off with a boom as MGM sold their costumes off to all the rich hippies in LA... so a lot of it is already worn out and gone.
If you look at Sears catalogs of the day, the sizes go way, way up. That I think is a truer cross-section of the typical buyers.

 

[Cobden]

Another point that no-ones brought up is the fact that smoking was far more common, which acts as an appetite supressant; they didn't want to eat as much and (as a smoker myself) it stops you from having the desire to snack.
Another thing the bear in mind is that vegetables and fruit have become less healthy over the years due to combination of long distance transportation and intensive farming (an orange in 1940 is believed to have 10 times the nutrients they do nowadays, apparently).

 

[HungaryTom]

See how people live in the developing world.

How do the poorest 1 billion stay so lean and thin?
The way of life in the Golden Era was just half-way between our overconsumption and the total NIHIL of those hopeless.
The BMI also.
For those who had overconsumption - they were not lean either those days.

 

[Bill Taylor]

One thing not mentioned is the timing for meals. My formative years were the 1930s and meal times were rigid. Breafast was a big meal, served early in the morning no later than 6 or 6:30 am. Dinner was the mid day meal at 12 noon and was also a big meal. Supper, usually around 6 pm or so was a much smaller meal. And I have read it is not healthy to eat big evening meals later than about 6pm. Both my wife and I are thin. I weigh approximately the same as I did at 16 when I graduated from high school in 1948. I'm 6'1" and weigh about 150 pounds and my wife is 5'5" and weighs about 105 pounds. Except for special occasions, we pretty much stick to the big meal at noon and smaller suppers as early as feasible.

With today's work ethic and long commutes, an early supper is often difficult which makes me wonder if the standard of living has really improved all that much, if at all. I have my doubts, although my wife and I may have a skewed viewpoint as the drepession years did not really affect either of our families to much of an extent, nor did it affect too many of those we knew when we were younger and growing up. In case that sounds confusing, my wife and I have known each other all of our lives, so we're not exactly strangers. And nope, even after 54 years of being married, I ain't tired of her.

Bill

 

[univibe88]

my wife and I have known each other all of our lives, so we're not exactly strangers. And nope, even after 54 years of being married, I ain't tired of her.

Bill

Bill, that is awesome!!!

I am 29 years old, and as much as I agree with the lifestyle you have described I can't imagine my life allowing it.

My typical day is waking up at 6:30am with my two daughters. I have coffee while I get them ready for school while working on my laptop. I'm out the door around 7:30am.

Lunch is something on the go. Sometimes it's as healthy as a salad from Whole Foods; other days it's McDonalds. My main meal of the day is Dinner. At the earliest I'm home at 6:30 and I have dinner with my family. Other days they eat and save a plate for me and I get to eat around 8 or 8:30.

The 12-14 hour work day is just a fact of life for me and it definitely mucks up meal times.

 

[Last_Chael]

My dad always used to say that you should breakfast like a king, lunch like a commoner and dinner like a pauper. I completely agree that meal timing has a lot to do with it. I can't function without breakfast, and I'm still shocked that my boyfriend and his brother don't eat breakfast!

I try to have a large bowl of porridge for breakfast (This usually keeps me going well into the afternoon!); a hot meal for lunch if I'm home, or if I'm at work I'll have heated up pasta or steamed veges; and for dinner I usually try and have a salad with either tuna, chicken or baked fish. Though I've noticed that daylight savings really stuffs up my meal times. I've jsut recently moved interstate; from no daylight savings, to daylight savings. I do tend to take my cues for eating from the time of day outside, so where I would usually eat at 7ish, now I eat at 8ish, because that's when it's getting dark (in summer). So I'm going to try and be more consistent with watching the clock. And I always try to not eat after 8 (if I can help it!).

IT's definitely down to lifestyle changes, some have been good but some have been bad.

 

[gluegungeisha]

My dad always used to say that you should breakfast like a king, lunch like a commoner and dinner like a pauper. I completely agree that meal timing has a lot to do with it. I can't function without breakfast, and I'm still shocked that my boyfriend and his brother don't eat breakfast!

That's always how I've done things, and it's not even intentional! I just have less of an appetite at night. My breakfasts have always been huge, though. I go crazy when I don't start my day with a big meal!

 

[Forgotten Man]

softdrinks and sweets were not invented.

Soft drinks and sweets were all the rage during Prohibition! The ice cream soda went up in popularity over night! Soda counters were buzzin' cousin! With all the illegal booz and hooch bein' sold by the mugs, there was a good portion of people who didn't drink it, that kept the laws and sat their butts at any empty stool at the corner drug store!

The sweets and soda they had then wasn't as full of CRAP as it is today!

Hard work has been mentioned many times but, it's the truth! All the factories were operated by MEN! Not computer operated robots! Things weren't as automated as they are today! People did work... not operate the computers that DID the work!

Just think of every automated thing we have today, then, picture it then... a real person did it! Telephone operators come to mind... not an easy job! I've seen photos of rows of young women sitting or standing at large switch boards... a demanding task it was!

Now, during the great depression, people worked extra hard for a round meal! Most people who didn't find work, stood in lines for broth and bread! Not a very nutritious meal in any respect. Some managed ok, but, by the time the war came, food was rationed! Now, the amount of meat, butter, and sugar that was rationed was low as we've seen here in this thread... but, remember a Victory Garden was strongly encouraged! In every magazine... I've seen ads for Victory Gardens... and eating whole grain breads! They cooked with more greens and veggies... and supplemented their meals with meat and they used a fruit type of sugar for baking and such when sugar wasn't around.

People did with what they had! And they worked hard... kids played out side more, skippin' rope, playin' jax, cops and robbers, or whatever. I really feel that electronic stimulants such as video games and computers have really made our generation soft. And all these computer operated machines have taken away many jobs.

Now, portions of meals really depends on where you live and who does the cooking! My grandmother Smith (rest her soul) used to make smaller portions for meals... and I ALWAYS left the table hungry! Then, I'd visit my Grandmother Hatch... NEVER LEFT HUNGRY! My Granny Smith was a little older and lived through the Depression... my Granny Hatch lived through the Depression but, was just a kid... she was married in '48 after the war and then was the time to EAT! However, she never did waste one item of food... hahaha I thank my Great Granny Jackman for that!

I'm tryin' to thin down my self... I've become a little thick and my vintage clothes tell me so... so, I'm eating smaller portions, and eating a depression era styled diet... well, tryin' anyway. I'm not goin' out to eat as much as I used to... and I'm tryin' to do my own cookin'! And believe it or not, it's not that bad... and I like it! I appreciate my meals more when I cook them and not nuke some pre-made frozen piece of junk... my microwave stays cold most of the year. lol

Just eat more natural whole foods and go out and play! You'll see what I mean!

 

[metropd]

How did they stay so thin? I am so jealous.lol

 

[SpitfireXIV]

Walking the very underated excercise.

no kidding. i went on vacation to a resort in the Caribbean that was "all inclusive" and came back thinner. the reasons? we were active most of the day with running around the island to dive sports, shopping, etc & skipped lunch daily. after dinner we walked the beach... oh, and we ate a lot of fresh fruits -- in addition to the ones in our tropical drinks!

i think with all that all the entertainment options, we've gotten accustomed to sinking into our chair and not getting out nearly enough. especially in northern climates!

 

[Dixon Cannon]

Talk about thin.....

Look at these hep cats! It must have been the Swing, man! :eusa_clap

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9J5Zt2Obko

-dixon cannon