from CNN's front page: "Vintage Health Advice ~ 1915"

[Xavier_Godshore]

Another interesting link on CNN's main page:

Health advice from the vintage cookbook vault

 

[Fletch]

almost morbidly concerned with ease of digestion

Given the unscientific state of recipes, food storage, and eating habits generally, indigestion then was probably closer to normal than digestion.

Many diseases which occur after middle life are due to eating and drinking such foods as were indulged in during vigorous manhood.

You can say that again...82 years later.

BTW, people had surely been making Garbage Soup for centuries, quite often including actual garbage. (See above comment re indigestion.)

 

[Alex]

I find it funny how they're advertising bacon as a healthy food.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I eat bacon every morning, have for years, and my doc says I'm textbook healthy. Maybe they were onto something.

 

[Amy Jeanne]

They have "diet plans" in my old Photoplay magazines from the 20s and 30s...what is it that a dieting woman should eat? Pork chops and pineapple with buttermilk?

 

[Alex]

I eat bacon every morning, have for years, and my doc says I'm textbook healthy. Maybe they were onto something.

http://www.americablog.com/2010/05/this-just-in-bacon-is-bad-for-you.html
Research it more if you don't believe. But If you eat a healthy diet all around, then you probably don't have to worry about it as much as someone who would eat McDonald's every day or something as well.

 

[_RAGNAR_]

and there are ten studies that show something different. I'm old enough to have seen a study for every side of every aurgument.

I'll keep eating bacon

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well, I look at it this way. I'm 48 years old, I don't smoke, I don't carouse, I barely drink, I always obey the speed limit -- and the thought that because of my clean living I might live to be 100 is absolutely terrifying. Bring on the bacon.

 

[Harp]

Bring on the bacon.

with three scrambled eggs, hash browns, toast, and coffee, please.

 

[Feraud]

I find it funny how they're advertising bacon as a healthy food.

Compared to the constant and excessive consumption of processed high fructose laboratory concoctions people eat while getting no exercise and texting, I'd say bacon is sounding relatively healthy.

 

[Puzzicato]

what is it that a dieting woman should eat? Pork chops and pineapple with buttermilk?

All in one dish?

 

[Undertow]

Compared to the constant and excessive consumption of processed high fructose laboratory concoctions people eat while getting no exercise and texting, I'd say bacon is sounding relatively healthy.

This is exactly right! While the majority of Americans eat processed junk (refined wheat, HFCS, a list of toxic preservatives and pesticides, etc), they stand around with hands planted firmly on foreheads wondering why they're obese. All the while, folks that eat normal food (read bacon, eggs, garden veggies, normal bread, etc) have few problems. When I was in college, my roommate from Egypt used to complain about how American food made him fat no matter how much he exercised. When he came back after his summer in Egypt, he'd been thin and tiny again. He said Egyptian food was just normal, whereas ours made him hungry and tired.

I'm guilty myself - I'm broke and thus don't have the necessary funds to get the good stuff. As soon as I can afford a Country Living grain mill, I'll be making my own real bread (I make stuff with refined flour at the moment). And as soon as I can get into a house, I'll be building a greenhouse for year-round veggies. It's easy to live healthy once you get away from all the junk out there.

 

[martinsantos]

Health advices are very interesting. They change from heaven to hell and back to heaven in few years.

My wife's grandmother ate bacon until she stopped cooking, at 80 y. o. Died in 2007, aged 97.

Eggs and olive oil were pure poison in 70s - now they are recommended. I remember on old "Reader's Digest" telling that we must eat only one egg per week, if absolutely necessary!

I think that the really trouble are in all those dyes, conservants, etc, we find in industrialized food.

 

[Alex]

Think about it. What do pigs eat? Anything. They also have no sweat glands, so there's really no good way for one to release a lot of the toxins. You basically ingest toxins that they have in their body from the junk they eat. Also says in the Bible that they are unclean and detestable for man, just using it only as an example.

 

[scottyrocks]

Everything in moderation and youll be fine. Very simple, afaic.

 

[Pompidou]

Think about it. What do pigs eat? Anything. They also have no sweat glands, so there's really no good way for one to release a lot of the toxins. You basically ingest toxins that they have in their body from the junk they eat. Also says in the Bible that they are unclean and detestable for man, just using it only as an example.

If a person is unhealthy, it's not the bacon that's responsible. If a person is healthy, it's not the bacon that's responsible. Being one or the other is a whole lifestyle. The important thing is a balanced diet. You need natural fats and cholesterols. Bacon as part of a balanced diet of meats, fruits, vegetables, dairy, etc is the best thing you can do. Not all bacon, only bacon, all the time - that'll kill you quick - but then, so would anything else in that sentence. Now I want to eat some bacon and eggs.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Health advices are very interesting. They change from heaven to hell and back to heaven in few years.

I think the question we should always ask about health studies is *who is funding them.* There are more agendas-per-square-mile in the "health research" racket than just about anything else.

The best thing anyone can do for their health is push themselves away from the table three times a day. Cut the portion sizes, eat in moderation -- the Ration Book Diet, for example -- and you needn't worry about the panicky fad of the moment.

As far as toxins from pork, we eat lobsters here too, and they eat stuff even pigs wouldn't touch.

 

[Alex]

If a person is unhealthy, it's not the bacon that's responsible. If a person is healthy, it's not the bacon that's responsible. Being one or the other is a whole lifestyle. The important thing is a balanced diet. You need natural fats and cholesterols. Bacon as part of a balanced diet of meats, fruits, vegetables, dairy, etc is the best thing you can do. Not all bacon, only bacon, all the time - that'll kill you quick - but then, so would anything else in that sentence. Now I want to eat some bacon and eggs.

Yeah it's the whole lifestyle of course, but I was just staying on topic about bacon. I mean it tastes super good and won't kill you if you eat it, as long as that's not the only thing you eat, like you said.

A bacon egg and cheese sandwich sounds really good now too haha.

 

[1961MJS]

Hi

My granddaddy Harv was born prior to 1900. From roughly 1970 until he died in mid 1979, he ate bacon and eggs with toast to soak the eggs in three meals a day. He added black eyed peas for lunch and dinner. He had a stroke (8 hours under the car, working on it in the snow) in 1963 or 4 and was relatively healthy until he died of emphysema in 1979. He also had black lung, and smoked a pipe constantly until getting shoved under the oxygen tent a couple of days before he died. At least the bacon didn't kill him...

Later

 

[Marla]

I think the question we should always ask about health studies is *who is funding them.* There are more agendas-per-square-mile in the "health research" racket than just about anything else.

The best thing anyone can do for their health is push themselves away from the table three times a day. Cut the portion sizes, eat in moderation -- the Ration Book Diet, for example -- and you needn't worry about the panicky fad of the moment.

As far as toxins from pork, we eat lobsters here too, and they eat stuff even pigs wouldn't touch.

The prevailing wisdom on what is and is not healthy to eat seems to change every 30 years or so based on new scientific studies, which always contradict the findings that came before. Are we supposed to overhaul our diets accordingly? For an overview of the many different diets touted as "ideal" by scientists throughout the 20th-Century I recommend Gary Taubes' book Good Calories, Bad Calories.