They Really Didn't Eat Less In Years Gone Bye

Conventional imagery foisted upon us from multiple sources has convinced us that a couple hundred years ago our ancestors lived in a nearly-starved state working the ground as peasant farmers. Never mind the fact that if this was true and the nation was comprised of a subsistence population we would never have had the level of success that is clear historical fact.

Consider some of the anthropological texts which speak to the type of diet enjoyed by our American and British Ancestors.

Eric Ross wrote of the late 19th century British Diet, "Breakfast consisted of fish, poultry, or game, if in season; sausages, and one meat of some sort, such as mutton cutlets, or filets of beef; omelets, and eggs served in a variety of ways; bread of both kinds, white and brown, and fancy bread of as many kinds as can conveniently be served; two or three kinds of jam, orange marmalade, and fruits when in season; and on the side table, cold meats such as ham, tongue, cold game, or game pie, galantines, and in winter a round of spiced beef."

This was a description of the common fare at a country home. Doesn't sound like the British were hard up for food, does it? They didn't live on a starvation diet in order to remain thin...but they did. But how about in America?

According to Historian Hillel Schwartz, large meals were commonplace as well: "The 75-cent special at Fred Harvey restaurants in the late 1870s included tomato puree, stuffed whitefish with potatoes, a choice of mutton or beef or pork or turkey, chicken turnovers, shrimp salad, rice pudding and apple pie, cheese with crackers, and coffee."

Maybe that was the diet of the rich though, right? Hardly. Here's what Schwartz recalls of the upper-class diet: "When life insurance medical directors sat down to their banquet in 1895, they had clams, cream soup, kingfish with new potatoes, filet mignon with string beans, sweetbreads and green peas, squabs and asparagus, petits fours, cheese with coffee, and liqueurs to follow..."

Wow. People were living it up in the 1800's, huh? Maybe not in earlier times though. Well....maybe that's not true Schwartz finishes up by saying that this food was enjoyed "in two or more courses and thirty to sixty minutes shorter than formal dinners of the previous era, and their portions were smaller."

Looks like we might be wrong in thinking that our forefathers were starved wraiths and that our problem in getting so fat as a nation is that we eat too much during each sitting.