Eating Habits of the Past vs. Now

[Kimberly]

I am back to clean, healthy eating after a week of eating Easter candy, ice cream and other junk I try to avoid. After one day I feel so much better and have my energy back. I used to think I was carbohydrate sensitive but I ruled that out because my body feels great if I give it good carbs instead of the processed carbs I tend to like to eat.

Anyhow, I own a bunch of vintage cookbooks and I love to look through them to see what was popular in the past. What I find funny is the fact that the recipes were full of red meat, potatoes, cakes, butter, etc. Right now these are the things we are being told to avoid because it makes us unhealthy and causes us to gain weight.

What I find ironic about this is the fact that people in the 20's to the 70's were slimmer than many people are today. Why is it that they ate what they did and didn't gain weight?

I think it comes down to a lot of things with much of it being the processed foods we are consuming today. Yes, they had ice cream, cakes, frozen food and even McDonald's back in those days, but they didn't eat as much of it as we are today.

I also think it's because a lot of people eat out more than they did in the past. Many people are overworked and tired after working all day, driving the kids to practice, etc. and go to the drive thru or order pizza because they are far too exhausted to make dinner.

I am just curious what others think about this issue.

 

[manton]

I think the fast food v. home cooking point explains a lot. The most unhealthy home cooking has far less salt and fat than the average fast food meal. Plus, I'm guessing here, but I think that processed snack foods were far less commen then, and those things are really, really bad.

 

[RaasAlHayya]

Another reason is that people ate much smaller portions in past years than we do now.

Here is one of thousands of articles on the web:

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0826/is_6_19/ai_111111456

--Leslie

 

[skwerl-hat]

it seems like in the past a lot more whole foods were eaten at least in my family they grew a lot of their own food so always had potatoes, carrots,radishes,corn etc on hand at least seasonally.

 

[Photomuse]

Processed foods, environment, and the simple fact that Americans have just become too lazy. Much less exercise today.

 

[Daisy Buchanan]

You're all so right. People ate smaller portions, but for lack of a better term, foods were "cleaner". None of the processed, filled with fillers and preservatives.
It's perfectly fine to be a meat and potato type of person. However, the notion of "farm fresh" has been over taken by "bulk foods". In the past 5 years or so, company's like Whole Foods are bringing back the idea of "farm fresh" foods, but they are so much more expensive, and even though they try, it's just not the same product that was available 50 years ago.
For the past 20 years or so we have gone through the "McDonaldization" of society. Is it just pure luck that the #1 killer of adults is heart disease? Or that the most prevalent illness of children and teens is Type 2 Diabetes, and coming up in second place are Dental Cavities? (this data is a few years old so forgive me if I'm a bit off, just too tired to look it up at the moment, but you get my point)
Also, we can look at the prevalence of GI disorders. Of course, such diseases like Crohn's Disease and Colitis have always been incredibly difficult to diagnose, and 50 years ago a majority of people had never even heard of such illnesses, so it might just be that a lot of people had them but didn't know it. They could have thought they had a sensitive stomach and just learned to live with it, rather than going to a doctor. However, especially in the past five years or so, there has been a dramatic increase in the number of apparent cases of IBS (Irritable Bowel Syndrome, this is completely different than something like Crohn's or Colitis, which are auto-immune diseases). But, my point is that all the sudden there is this increase in people with GI problems. Of course, IBS can be initiated by stress. However a lot of the people who are having the symptoms of it grew up in this fast food nation that we live in, on diets of processed, fried, filled and artificial foods. Again, maybe people just didn't talk about these things with their doctors back then. However I think a lot of it has to do with the significant changes in our diets over the past 5 decades or so.

Now let me just say, I should follow my own advice. I eat horribly. It doesn't help that I take prescribed steroids that make me incredibly hungry. However, like Kimberly said, when I do take the time to eat the right things, and I'm not talking about cutting the carbs, I'm talking about eating the right carbs, having a balanced diet, I feel so much better both physically and mentally. Being that I have Crohn's disease, balance is difficult. I can't eat a lot of veggies, and my diet is supposed to be pretty strict, it's called a "low residue" diet. But, I'm terrible with following it. I swear, it's all the steroids fault!! They make me eat all those cookies!! But, I know that I would feel better if I cut certain things out and stuck to more natural foods.

Hmm, maybe I'll look back on this thread the next time I get a craving for sweets. It could just give me the motivation I need to stick to something more natural
My sister feeds my 2 year old nephew only natural foods. Of course he gets the goodies, but she stays away from trans fats and saturated fats, just about anything artificial too. My nephew is an incredibly healthy little guy who is growing strong. She feeds him fish and meat and eggs, and is teaching him that snacks are OK, in moderation. She also somehow convinced the little guy that fruit is a special treat. So now when it's snack time if he has a choice between something like grapes or a nectarine or a cookie, he'll often choose the fruit. I think all these new studies are starting to make parents realize that America, in particular America's kids, have a serious diet problem. So, it seems that new parents are instilling better eating habits, so hopefully the rate of diabetes and obesity amongst teens will be in decline over the next decade as the new group of toddlers enter their teen years...

 

[LizzieMaine]

Processed snack foods, I think, are a huge part of the problem today -- and I say this as someone who has been known to slink off into a dark corner with a bag of Cheez Doodles. This sort of stuff didn't really exist in the pre-war era -- potato chips were around, but you didn't walk into a grocery store and see an entire aisle full of salty, greasy junk food, and it certainly wasn't served as a standard part of lunch, or sold to kids in schools.

Likewise, people are drinking a lot more soda and other sugary beverages then they did sixty years ago -- when you had a Coke in 1945, it came in a six ounce serving, not a twenty ounce one, and few households kept soft drinks on hand in the refrigerator the way that most do now.

When I look thru my grandmother's cookbooks and her handwritten recipes I don't see much that would be considered low-fat by today's standards, and from my own memories of meals at her house, it was all pretty old-school working class food. She baked with lard, she fried in drippings, and there was always real butter on the table -- she wouldn't stand for oleo. With every meal you got a slab of meat -- usually pork or beef -- or fish, if a neighborhood kid had been by selling mackerel off the back of a red wagon. There'd always be a helping of starch, usually mashed or baked or fried potatoes. And the vegetables were usually Stokely's Wax Beans or Del Monte Peas or something equally bland, although we could expect to see fresh string beans or pod peas in the summer, and maybe corn on the cob as an occasional treat. Salad was only on the menu for special occasions, usually Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Saturdays though, were special -- real New England baked beans, made with molasses and mustard and real salt pork, cooked all day in a heavy old pot, and always served with that brown bread that came in a can. *That* was good eatin'.

One more thing that comes to mind. We did *not* eat in front of the TV. That was the unchanging, uncompromising rule. There was none of this automated, passive eating that people tend to do in front of the tube, where you eat and eat and eat and don't realize how much you've eaten until you look at the scale. I think that's a rule that ought to be revived.

 

[Diamondback]

One more thing that comes to mind. We did *not* eat in front of the TV. That was the unchanging, uncompromising rule. There was none of this automated, passive eating that people tend to do in front of the tube, where you eat and eat and eat and don't realize how much you've eaten until you look at the scale. I think that's a rule that ought to be revived.

Uh-oh--does eating in between posts here from the laptop and the WiFi hotspot count against that? If so, I'm in trouble... (We'll overlook the constant pacing...)

 

[pigeon toe]

I have a cookbook from the 40's, and like others have said, it's full of fattening recipes! Even when I go to my grandmother's house, she has a totally different attitude towards food that I do. I don't put butter on anything, but she'll put half a stick on a potato for me. Then again, for a snack she'll have a handful of pretzels and I'll eat half a tray of brownies!

I love reading the "diets" in my 30's-50's beauty and health guides. They are so strange! One of them from the 40's recommended drinking a tall glass of buttermilk at lunch! Yikes!

 

[Atomic Glee]

Also don't forget that cities and towns did not suffer from massive suburbanization and forced car trips, and were usually much more walkable and connected with transit. I tend to think people got more daily exercise because of that.

 

[Tomasso]

been known to slink off into a dark corner with a bag of Cheez Doodles.

 

[goldwyn girl]

I also think the lack of exercise now days has a lot to do the the overweight issues. Instead of walking to the store or post office for example it's easy to jump in the car and go. House work was also more physical with out fully automatic washing machines and dryers and vacuum cleaners, so all the extra fat and carbohydrate was needed for extra energy.

 

[Joie DeVive]

While I will agree there is a lot more junk around for us to be eating, I think my vote has to go with exercise too.

The workforce had a lot more blue collar workers just one or two generations ago. A lot fewer people were sitting behind desks. Most of them were burning off whatever it was that they ate. And from what I've heard farm portions weren't small by any stretch of the imagination, even by today's standards!!

One other possible contributing factor is when people ate. I know that in farm communities that the biggest meals were in the morning or middle of the day, when you still had time to work off the calories. Today, our big calorie meals are often in the evening when those calories can just turn into fat. I've heard experts say both that when you eat does matter, and that it doesn't, so you have me on that one, but it could be a factor....

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

Other than snack foods, I think that many more people eat between the general three meals, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Normally you have three meals a day, maybe four if you include Brunch or tea time, which would have had finger foods. I eat three basic meals a day, but I also have in between snacks and even full meals. Not everyday. Out in the street, I hardly see many people out walking. Even on the weekends. Coming closer to the urban areas (I live in what was once the farmland of SoCal), I see a lot more people walking around.

 

[ValleyBoy]

My grandparents still use fresh ingredients for every meal. It's incredible how they eat. They were married in 1937.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

I love reading the "diets" in my 30's-50's beauty and health guides. They are so strange! One of them from the 40's recommended drinking a tall glass of buttermilk at lunch! Yikes!

I love them, too! In one of mine it says to drink 8 glasses of milk a day!!

 

[beaucaillou]

One of the major reasons people were smaller before is that nutrition was much, much worse. Today we've gone to the other extreme where things are too fortified and tinkered with, preserved and processed, so there was a middle ground in there we entirely missed. Here's hoping we learn to rest in the middle.

 

[mikepara]

There wasn't as many sweets around, at least in England. Speaking of which 5 weeks ago I stopped eating biscuits and sweets (candy) and have lost a stone. All other normal eating habits remain unmodified.

 

[jamespowers]

There wasn't as many sweets around, at least in England. Speaking of which 5 weeks ago I stopped eating biscuits and sweets (candy) and have lost a stone. All other normal eating habits remain unmodified.

You lost a stone?! Kidney or otherwise?

Regards,

J

 

[Miss Neecerie]

No....

a stone of the 14 pound variety. Its a weight measurement...