Would you define your diet as mostly historically traditional, imported traditional, or modern????

lemurcat2 wrote: »

NVintage wrote: »

That's very true! I might should say the average" person of means". It was just a fun history article, and I can't find it now.. It was actually referencing a household management book that was advising what to buy per person for the week. I'm the one that divided it per day and said "some meat and veg"...the book said around 50 oz each of chicken and beef per week,( so 7.1428 oz chicken and 7.1248 oz beef per person day),but that if fish, puddings, and veg were bought that would decrease the amount of meat needed. It also said to buy 4.5 oz milk per week per person.
I just mentioned it because I assume that would be considered my traditional diet since about 80% of ancestors come from that area, but I could never eat that much bread!:)

paperpudding wrote: »

NVintage wrote: »

I guess they would say I eat imported traditionally for the most part? I try to eat a Mediterranean diet even though I'm American and most of my ancestors are from England/Ireland. I read in an article that the typical British person ate a POUND of bread per day, 8oz potatoes, 2 beers, a couple T butter, 2T sugar, and some meat and vegetables in 1860!

Britain is a varied place - in 1860 people in rural Ireland and people in London may have had quite different staple foods.

I highly doubt the average ( read, not well- off ) person ate the equivalent of 3/4 loaf of bread per day in 1860 (my own standard loaf weighs 650g in total)

Not sure how much beer they would of drunk - for a long time beer was a drink much watered down compared to modern beer.

a couple of spoons of butter and 2 spoons of sugar doesnt sound much and ' some meat and vegetables' means anything - 'some' being such a poorly defined amount.

Not sue what the article was meaning to imply.

Supersizers Go is a fun show, although I'd take it with a grain of salt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aKwYECKxVw&list=PLE6540D9DCB4A9949.

They eat as if they are in a particular time and place (and social class), usually London area. The one I linked is their Victorian one.

The first one I saw was the Restoration one, and at least in the (better off) class they were pretending to be, it seems like it was super insanely meat heavy. Apparently the Puritans were mocked for eating more vegetables, and at one point they went to a part of the country that was supposed to have more of them and got to eat a more veg-heavy meal and Sue (also from British Baking Show, and a comedian) said something like she actually appreciated the Puritans for the first time, since the amount of meat they'd been eating was making her feel pretty unwell.

The bread would be easier to eat if you were as active as you would have been living back then, perhaps. The insane grain servings (although servings are smaller than many imagine) from the old US pyramid I think was about getting sufficient cals cheaply.

From a slightly earlier period than 1860 (1720 or so), Benjamin Franklin wrote about the beer drinking in London, when he was working at a printing press there (not that people didn't drink heavily in America):

"At my first admission into this printinghouse I took to working at press, imagining I felt a want of the bodily exercise I had been used to in America, where presswork is mixed with composing. I drank only water; the other workmen, near fifty in number, were great guzzlers of beer. On occasion, I carried tip and down stairs a large form of types in each hand, when others carried but one in both hands. They wondered to see, from this and several instances, that the Water-American, as they called me, was stronger than themselves, who drank strong beer! We had an ale-house boy who attended always in the house to supply the workmen. My companion at the press drank every day a pint before breakfast, a pint at breakfast with his bread and cheese, a pint between breakfast and dinner, a pint at dinner, a pint in the afternoon about six O'clock, and another when he had done his day's work. I thought it a detestable custom; but it was necessary, he supposed, to drink strong beer that he might be strong to labor. I endeavored to convince him that the bodily strength afforded by beer could only be in proportion to the grain or flour of the barley dissolved in the water of which it was made; that there was more flour in a pennyworth of bread; and, therefore, if he would eat that with a pint of water, it would give him more strength than a quart of beer. He drank on, however, and had four or five shillings to pay out of his wages every Saturday night for that muddling liquor, an expense I was free from. And thus these poor devils kept themselves always under."