Low Income and Staying Healthy?

[jayem]

I'm curious as how women stayed pretty, healthy, and strong during the Depression days when income was low. I ask because my situation seems to be echoing that. I've been adding some extra calcium and iron into my diet (I'm already anemic, so the extra iron is much appreciated) but I'm wondering if there was anything else the women did back in the days?

 

[KittyT]

Well keep in mind that there was no fast food back then and on average, everyone ate healthier because that's what was available. It's not hard to do these days either - fast food and foods processed with hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup may be cheaper, but you can also buy healthy things like beans, rice, lentils, etc at a low price, especially if you buy bulk.

Also, exercise is easily available at no cost

 

[beaucaillou]

Also to keep in mind, nearly every household task was completed by a woman and none of those tasks were easy or non-strenuous.

My Grandmother still has her vacuum from the 40's and it must weigh 45 pounds *easy*. Add in no washers (largely) and no dryers, heavy hot irons, cast iron stoves and beating the rugs out regularly, somewhat poor nutrition... makes me tired just thinking about it!

 

[Redhead]

My grandmother helped her father with the garden and farm and her mother made cottage cheese to sell to the neighbors and to eat at home as well. They didn't have any running water or electricity in the house, but they never went hungry. There's no where for me to grow a garden or raise chickens here in downtown Sacramento, but if I did, I'd so be starting a garden right now. . .

Chandra

 

[jayem]

Well keep in mind that there was no fast food back then and on average, everyone ate healthier because that's what was available. It's not hard to do these days either - fast food and foods processed with hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup may be cheaper, but you can also buy healthy things like beans, rice, lentils, etc at a low price, especially if you buy bulk.

Also, exercise is easily available at no cost

Beans and brown rice seem to also be my new best friends. If you go to the Hispanic markets, they're incredibly cheap! I rarely eat fast food simply because my stomach can't take it. The worse I get is a cup of coffee from Starbucks everyday, which I know i should really cut back on...

 

[LizzieMaine]

All good points above, but there's another factor -- a lot of those people smoked like fiends, which tended to kill the appetite. Lucky Strike even ran a series of ads in the late twenties strongly suggesting without explicitly saying so that smoking was a healthy way to keep off the extra fat.

That said, I'll second the comment that doing housework the Depression-era way is better than any gym membership will ever be. Doing washing -- even with a wringer machine -- was hard work: to do an average load, you'd have to fill the tub and drain it at least four times, and the machines of the day didn't have pumps which meant carrying heavy pails of water to the sink back and forth many times over the course of the job. Or consider rolling up a heavy 8X10 woolen rug, hauling it out to the back yard, slinging it over the clothesline, beating all the dust out of it with a wire beater, hauling it off the line, rolling it back up, carrying it back in the house, rolling it back onto the floor, and replacing all the furniture you'd moved to pick it up. And imagine doing this *after* you'd already done all the basic chores of the day -- beds, dishes, sweeping, etc.

The women of the era often worked like pack animals -- and it's hard to pack on the flab when you're doing this every day of the week.

Foodwise, they ate a lot of protein when they could get it -- as mentioned, beans were the most common alternative to red meat. Chicken was also common, and if you lived in a coastal town you'd eat a lot of cheap fish like mackerel or scrod. If you were really dirt-dead poor, you might even forage for food -- dandelion greens, violet tops, all sorts of wild weeds were eaten by people who had nothing else.

 

[sweatyspaghetti]

well,i knew this family in Lodi that was related to hitler(i think most are dead now) and all they ate was grapes,olives,and bread. They were about 86 and 87 when i was 6.im now 22,so im pretty sure they are dead.

My grandpa almost shot one of them because they stole grapes from my grandpa, and he made wine so that was a big deal to him. But,alot of portuguese people are stingy and mean(i would know).
lol

 

[KittyT]

The worse I get is a cup of coffee from Starbucks everyday, which I know i should really cut back on...

You'll save a ton of money making your own coffee at home.

 

[live vintageous]

Seconding LizzieMaine!

That said, I'll second the comment that doing housework the Depression-era way is better than any gym membership will ever be. Doing washing -- even with a wringer machine -- was hard work: to do an average load, you'd have to fill the tub and drain it at least four times, and the machines of the day didn't have pumps which meant carrying heavy pails of water to the sink back and forth many times over the course of the job. Or consider rolling up a heavy 8X10 woolen rug, hauling it out to the back yard, slinging it over the clothesline, beating all the dust out of it with a wire beater, hauling it off the line, rolling it back up, carrying it back in the house, rolling it back onto the floor, and replacing all the furniture you'd moved to pick it up. And imagine doing this *after* you'd already done all the basic chores of the day -- beds, dishes, sweeping, etc.

The women of the era often worked like pack animals -- and it's hard to pack on the flab when you're doing this every day of the week.

This article from the BBC details how women of the 1950s kept their waists so trim (they ate less and did 3 hours of strenuous housework every day.) Of course, there's always our own Marzipan who is doing the 50's for a whole year.

I can't find the article (I'll see if I can find it and post it later), but I have one that gives a typical day with calorie count of a 1950s housewife, including walking 1 hour to do the family shopping, vacuuming, dishes, laundry, etc. It made my daily walks and T-Tapp/barre workouts seem insignificant.

 

[Lareesie Ladavi]

They didn't have all the tastey treats we have now, on every street corner.

Back in the day, everything had to be cooked...I hate cooking, so I would have been a starving spinster, but I'm okay with that. lol

 

[Paisley]

I'm curious as how women stayed pretty, healthy, and strong during the Depression days when income was low. I ask because my situation seems to be echoing that. I've been adding some extra calcium and iron into my diet (I'm already anemic, so the extra iron is much appreciated) but I'm wondering if there was anything else the women did back in the days?

Many of them in old photographs have a pleasant expression that isn't quite as common today.

 

[Paisley]

Check out this link on improving your looks for free:

http://www.thefedoralounge.com/showthread.php?t=27745

 

[Cricket]

I agree with everyone about the housework.
I work full-time, and my husband and I take turns with certain chores around the house after work.
Even with my load of chores and a year old son, I am exhausted at the end of the day. It is like I get a full work out.
No need for the gym tonight. I have laundry, chasing a son around, preparing dinner, ironing, outside work, etc. etc.
So, I am sure my Maw Maw kept her waist thin with all her domestic duties and her smokes.

 

[swinggal]

As said before, women were healthy because they worked damn hard physically. Even when you were heavily pregnant you were still expected to do all the household duties - including scrubbing floors etc. I guess this was kind of a trade off with smoking. I mean everyone who was crazily fit in the forces would have smoked. A lot of activity seemed to balance it out.

I also know that in Australia and Britain during the depression AND WW2 everyone with a backyard big enough was encouraged to grow their own fruit and veges and keep chickens if possible for eggs. My grandparents always had fruit trees and vege patch even into their 80s. It was just expected here during the war and friends in the street would swap produce with one another. People were frugal and ate less and anything leftover was made into something else - eg stale bread was made into Bread and Butter Pudding.

Apart from smoking, it was a pretty healthy lifestyle because fatty meat wasn't so available during wartime either. But it was easy to keep the fruit and veges coming from your own yard with not a lot of effort once the garden was established.

My pop lost his fortune as a younger man during the depression. My dad told me that at that time Pop was forced work his way east from the city to the goldfields - doing mechanical work for the farms along the way for food, because they couldn't pay him either. Pop said the worst time he remembers was having to camp in a field and eat boiled wheat because he had nothing else. I can't fathom that. he did well for himself in the end, but people today have no idea what it means to lose everything you have except the clothes on your back.

 

[~*Red*~]

It's surprising how many calories you burn doing housework.. You'd never guess. Last night I was making my own homemade wheat bread, and kneading for 1 minutes, while it doesn't sound like a lot, is HARD WORK and 10 minutes last FOREVER. Let's just say that I feel it in my core and my chest and triceps today.
So yah, working around the house like they did back then.. you'd burn every last calorie you ate plus about 1000 more. Bet on it.

 

[LelaViavonie]

I agree with you Red!

Last night I was super multi tasking.. LOL

I was cooking dinner/ lunch for the next day - Brown rice with chicken and sqwash and zucchini

At the same time.. I was cleaning all the Ceiling fans.. vacuming the house.. washing all of the sheets and towels.. dusting.. cleaned out the fridge, cleaned the walls ( I am just wierd like that) and hauling all (summer) clothes into storage.. wheeew.. by the time I finished.. I was reved up with energy at 9 pm.. LOL so I sat down after my shower and had a glass of wine...

I truly admire the ladies back then.. I take my apron off to them!

**EDIT**
When I say Admire.. I mean all the hard work they went through on a daily basis..

 

[Kitty_Sheridan]

A bit of a fallacy, really. Women weren't on average healthier, I get a bit galled when I hear this repeated.

Women were often run down, anaemic and usually with severe gynae probs after childbirth. Women often had prolapsed wombs, severe tears and ruptures. Those who could afford it could be fitted for special corsets those who couldn't suffered.

The abortion rate was high because of the economic problem and women often 'popped pills' from quacks.

Women weren't necessarily thinner either, a diet high in starch and carbs (cheap food like potatoes and bread) made them puffy and bloated.

Today we can eat healthily cheaply if we choose to, but this image of the super healthy 40s and 50s housewife is a bit of a myth....

 

[swinggal]

There were downsides and upsides at the time. Women certainly did not have an easy time with childbirth and it's aftermath on the body. There is no denying that. I guess they carried on, because they had too. Post natal depression was not recognised, they had no support from their men with babies or housework, no therapy...they just had to cope...which would have been extremely draining.

But people did a lot more walking and were generally much more active than they are today, regardless. One thing is clear though...obesity was rare. People just couldn't afford to sit and stuff their faces all day. Everyone cooked at home and highly processed foods weren't rife like they are today or available on every damn corner. Even when I was a kid in the 70s there were maybe 2 or 3 bigger kids in the whole school. Now obese kids are everywhere.

Both my grandparents went through the depression and WW2 and have both told me that they always had vegetables on the table for meals at the time, even if meat was scarce, because they grew their own, and so did everyone they knew.

It certainly would not have been a nice time to be a woman...unless you were very wealthy or kept.

 

[Paisley]

A bit of a fallacy, really. Women weren't on average healthier, I get a bit galled when I hear this repeated.

Today we can eat healthily cheaply if we choose to, but this image of the super healthy 40s and 50s housewife is a bit of a myth....

True, but I don't see where anybody made that claim in this thread. According to a director I know at a blood center, people are entering their 50s and 60s much healthier than they used to.

Perhaps this is a question of how to stay trim and well groomed. One way is to move to or work downtown. You have to walk a few (or several) blocks to your car, bus or train; you have to carry your lunch or pay downtown prices for food; and the people around you just look sharper than their suburban counterparts. Or just put these things into practice wherever you live.

 

[Lareesie Ladavi]

I think the biggest woe of women back then, was psychological health. It was taboo to talk about and this was a time when all they had was electric shock therapy, hot and cold water baths, and valium. Well, Valium didn't come until later, but that was what was given, for everything, until very recently. Mental health has come a long way. It's still somewhat taboo to talk about though and people don't understand that you just can't "get over it".