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

[be_lovely]

OOOH I have my grandad & uncles ration books, I need to take pics and post them. I found them when I was moving.

This is one week of food rations in 1940.

 

[Haversack]

I definitely agree that much greater physical activity and smaller portions on a day-to-day basis were largely the cause of the thinness of the previous generations. However, if we are talking about the 1920s, 30s, and 40s, people actually ate a fair amount of processed food. Fresh fruits and vegetables were only available during part of the year for most of the country. For the rest of the year, they came out of a can. Canneries were big business. Heinz started business back before the Civil War. The tomato cannery I worked in during the summer was the biggest cannery in the world when it was built in 1920. Take a look at recipe collections from those years and see how often canned goods, (fruit, vegetables, and meat), and condiments, (pickles, ketchups, and relishes), were called for. Granted, the ingredients used in commercial canning back then did not have as many polysyllables as they do today, but perservatives were still added. And you can always read _The Jungle_ by Upton Sinclair. Rose-coloured glasses can be attractive but they can also conceal what we don't look for.

Haversack.

 

[scotrace]

Easy. Great Depression. Hard work, little food.

 

[LaMedicine]

Hardly any processed JUNK. They cooked most everything from scratch. TV dinners came out in the 50's and it's gone down hill ever since. They certainly didn't have 20 different kinds of Pringles chips, 10+ brands of sugary cereal, 2+ sodas a day, ect....

Shop the outer perimeter of the grocery store.
Nikki

The produce were fresh, too, not "factory" produced, nor were poultry, beef and pork treated with all that extra "feed".
Most people probably rarely ate except at home, and took lunches from home to work.
Restaurant portions were smaller, too. I lived in the US in the early '60s, then when I visited for the first time in something like 25 years in '91, I was surprised by the larger portions, the 'burger size has deifinitely gone up, and oh, yeah, I don't think there were 3 or 4 tiered 'burgers back then. When I visited after another 10 years, the restaurant portions had gone up even more.

 

[ohairas]

We cook with diet coke quite often!
Nikki

Cooking with Dr. Pepper!? Thankfully, it didn't catch on.

 

[Miss Neecerie]

We cook with diet coke quite often!
Nikki

Makes a lovely glaze for hams too...


and dr. pepper served hot with lemon ...is much nicer then your mind says it is....quite yummy.

 

[$ally]

OOOH I have my grandad & uncles ration books, I need to take pics and post them. I found them when I was moving.

I'd love to see them!

 

[Diamondback]

This is one week of food rations in 1940. [image snipped]

A week? In a colder-weather climate, assuming my preferred schedule of round-the-clock operations, that wouldn't even hold me two days!

 

[GeniusInTheLamp]

And bear in mind that most people worked on farms prior to WWII. Most of the modern agricultural machinery of today had yet to be developed, and the more advanced machines were only available to the more affluent country squires.

 

[Doh!]

On the other hand, we are living longer these days. My grandmother died a few years ago just shy of her 102nd birthday!

 

[LaMedicine]

On the other hand, we are living longer these days. My grandmother died a few years ago just shy of her 102nd birthday!

Ahh, but which era did she grow up in? At her age, she would have spent the crucial stages of her life when eating habits form during the era when food was more healthy.
By the time food became what it is now, she would have had a very good physical base for healthy and long life.
I wonder how many of the present day younger generation will be able to live long and healthy with everything that is marketed now.

 

[Spitfire]

Easy: Hard physical work up to 10 hours a day and simple food.
No sitting down in front of the TV or the PC. No wine - except at birthdays and christmas - and then only one glass or maybe two.
Cars were few - you walked or took the bicycle.
Money were few - and softdrinks and sweets were not invented.

 

[Doh!]

I wonder how many of the present day younger generation will be able to live long and healthy with everything that is marketed now.

Excellent point. Time will tell, of course, but it would be ironic if life expectancy takes a nosedive due to our abundance of... well, everything.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Burger me!

Preparing meals from basic ingredients. A skill that appears to be dead on its back, or dying. My brothers partner can't cook to save herself, and it seems to be the general case for my entire generation. Our parents picked up very little from their parents (all of my grandparents - the men and the women - were great cooks) and they pass on less to us. Ready meals for the kids every night. Mmmm, healthy. I can hear the arteries a-cloggin'. (Of course, this is Scotland, where the diets have never been what you would call "good", but it looks like the high fat - lard sandwiches, yummy - high sugar, high salt diet was actually better than the current all pre-processed diet.

(Hard work is a bit of a cop-out "it's so bad now" argument in my opinion. Plenty of people today do manual labour. many may many people back then had office jobs, sitting on their butts all day, but they didn't get fat.)

bk

 

[PrettySquareGal]

I believe a lot of it had to do with social pressures, too. Back then, it was less socially acceptable to be overweight- one was more likely to be called "fat" than today. Also, because so few people were obese, you were more likely to stand out. Unlike today, conformity was more of a motivating factor. These days, more people than not are obese.

 

[LaMedicine]

I believe a lot of it had to do with social pressures, too. Back then, it was less socially acceptable to be overweight- one was more likely to be called "fat" than today. Also, because so few people were obese, you were more likely to stand out. Unlike today, conformity was more of a motivating factor. These days, more people than not are obese.

A recent research substantiates this, though the orginal article raised a ruckus that the researchers had never intended to. For them, it was just a clinical obeservation.
Your best friend can make you fat.

 

[John K Stetson]

I read an article that stated that because of many of the factors mentioned here, the
current generation of children's life expectancy is projected to be less than that of
their parents (here is the US).

There's also a lot more snacking and between-meals eating - Taco Bell is now promoting itself as the "4th meal..." eaten, no doubt, late at night before going to bed, with nary a chance to work off any of those calories.

I agree with the comments about portions, but that means a little self-restraint is in order: don't eat it all, bring the rest home or have leftovers.

Re: seeds and the like. I read an article in Slow Food a couple years ago. The mega-companies making the pesticides / herbicides also make the GM'ed seeds that are of course resistant to said chemicals...so one might be encouraged to use more! Oh, let's not think about the effect on wildlife, or on anything that might get touched by the chemicals translocating via wind, water washoff, etc. Oh, and many of the seeds now produce frutis and veggies that don't have their own seeds so... you gotta buy them all again next year. Emphasis is on high-volume, high-producing foods, not necessarily those that taste good (there is a case to be made here in some way for growing food in developing nations).

Re: organic - look for CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) arrangements in your area. Many are ogranic or biodynamic...we have a subscription, go and pick up our stuff weekly, and enjoy incredible, healthy fresh food. Ours is only a grower, but he has arrangements with meat and dairy producers. Another potential source is Farm to City...
I haven't done the math but people that have say they save a fair amount over grocery store costs for organic. Last year I read that Sam's Club was going to start offering organic choices, so perhaps there's hope.

Off to do some manual labor in the gardens!

 

[PrettySquareGal]

A recent research substantiates this, though the orginal article raised a ruckus that the researchers had never intended to. For them, it was just a clinical obeservation.
Your best friend can make you fat.

LTNS, LaMedicine.

I did see that study and actually disagreed with the findings. While I agree that social pressures can influence one's weight, I would never call it "contagious." Ultimately, it's the individual that makes the choice. I read that study as another way to remove responsibility from the individual.

I guess it sounds like I'm contradicting myself.

What I mean is, people are heavily (no pun intended) influenced by the people around them, but they are not dictated by them in this sense.

 

[LaMedicine]

What I mean is, people are heavily (no pun intended) influenced by the people around them, but they are not dictated by them in this sense.

I haven't read the orginal article in NEJM (must dig it up) but "contagious" was likely not used in the original article. Hard to imagine a medical researcher using that word in such a context, as "contagious" has a very clear definition as a medical term, so it wouldn't be used in any other sense in a peer reviewed medical journal. That word was probably used by the media to draw attention.
It's very interesting, though, that good friends, even if they are far apart, apparently has a stronger influence than close family and spouses, whom one would be with daily. In the case of spouses, it may be that one's eating habits are formed much earlier than the stage in one's lives where one meets prospective spouses. Friends from childhood who go through thick and thin together probably have similar values and perspective on life, including eating, exercise, and body image/acceptable weight range.

 

[cookie]

The Sullivans and eating in the 40s

When you see the 1940s type shows like the Sullivans in Australia they are all tucking in to the full cooked breakfast of bacon and eggs etc even in War time. This contrast with the light breakfasts of today. Maybe we eat at the wrong time. The Italians generally do not eat pasta outside lunchtime as the starch sits on the stomach digesting into fat.

http://www.crawfords.com.au/libary/drama/sullivans.shtml#top