If It Wasn't Meat, What Did They Eat?

Mojisola

Dunroamin wrote: »

Dropping in here has been an eye opener - I thought everybody used the neck and giblets to make gravy and fried the liver!

The flavour of the gravy is so much better when the giblets are used!

ash28

ladymarmalade wrote: »

It's surprising really how many of the meals you all used to eat contain rich and fatty ingredients! It just goes to show how our lifestyles have changed. Most are nowhere near active enough to eat stew and dumplings/hash/roast dinners etc every day.

Diets might have seemed a bit high in saturated fats but it was low in trans fats/hydrogenated vegetable oils and other nasties that we consume in copious amounts today.

Most people ate fresh, natural ingredients and didn't use packet sauce mixes or jars. And they ate seasonal food. Bought biscuits, cakes and the like were a treat for most people - they made their cakes and rarely had biscuits. People bought their bread from a bakery with none of the additives that modern bread has - I can buy a loaf of bread that will last a week.....how good can that be for you?

Convenience food for my mother was tinned peas, tinned carrots, baked beans and Heinz tomato soup, tinned sardines and pilchards and tinned fruit

Fast food was fish and chips.

They used butter and not a low fat spread (and whatever it contains). Cheese wasn't the plastic crap you get in so many places today - and people didn't have a lot of it.

And interestingly the country in Europe that has the lowest rate of heart disease is France and the country with the highest consumption of saturated fat is also France - it's called the paradox of France.

The French often have 2 cooked meals a day - but tend not to use convenience food.

On the meat front, my mother bought meat by the pound and there were 6 of us including my parents - so a pound of meat served 6, which would have been the equivalent of around 75gms (just less than 3ozs) of meat each. Joints were different and she bought them by an amount of money.

FairyPrincessk

I've never actually bought a chicken with giblets! Not intentionally, it is just that they don't seem to come with them in the supermarket here. Next time I've got a bit of spare money in the food purse, I'll have to buy one at a butcher and try it all out.

FairyPrincessk

Mojisola wrote: »

Before the late 50s/early 60s, most chickens were dual-purpose breeds. They laid reasonably well and still laid down some meat that made them worth eating - as long as they weren't too old when killed.

People had been experimenting with breeding a meat-only bird since the 1930s, particularly in the States. In the 1950s the fast-growing broiler was introduced from the USA. "Improving" the breeding has continued and most chickens are now only around 40 days old when they go for slaughter. That is a phenomenal growth rate and explains why chickens don't taste like they used to.

Intensive housing as well as the new breeds made it very economical to produce huge amounts of chicken which were cheap enough for the ordinary person to buy regularly.

This is interesting--it just seems to me that they would have focused on rearing cheaper beef since beef cattle take significantly more space and food to rear. Of course, we would probably all be better off if many of these "innovations" hadn't come about. It feels overwhelming sometimes trying to balance between quality meat and being able to afford it and not eating meat--I really wonder what the pricing structure of food would be like now if we hadn't turned to these farming practices.

My great grandparent's chickens were definitely dual purpose. My mum always talks about cracking a fertilized egg. I used to help feed them as a child, and this is one of the few memories I have of my great grandmother before her stroke--outside with me helping me feed chickens.


Interestingly, my mum hates milk (as do I). She claims it is because she used to have to drink it straight from the milking on the farm which is a whole other kettle of fish. I understand now people pay a lot of money for raw milk.

Dunroamin

ash28 wrote: »

Diets might have seemed a bit high in saturated fats but it was low in trans fats/hydrogenated vegetable oils and other nasties that we consume in copious amounts today.

Most people ate fresh, natural ingredients and didn't use packet sauce mixes or jars. And they ate seasonal food. Bought biscuits, cakes and the like were a treat for most people - they made their cakes and rarely had biscuits. People bought their bread from a bakery with none of the additives that modern bread has - I can buy a loaf of bread that will last a week.....how good can that be for you?

Convenience food for my mother was tinned peas, tinned carrots, baked beans and Heinz tomato soup, tinned sardines and pilchards and tinned fruit

Fast food was fish and chips.

They used butter and not a low fat spread (and whatever it contains). Cheese wasn't the plastic crap you get in so many places today - and people didn't have a lot of it.

And interestingly the country in Europe that has the lowest rate of heart disease is France and the country with the highest consumption of saturated fat is also France - it's called the paradox of France.

The French often have 2 cooked meals a day - but tend not to use convenience food.

On the meat front, my mother bought meat by the pound and there were 6 of us including my parents - so a pound of meat served 6, which would have been the equivalent of around 75gms (just less than 3ozs) of meat each. Joints were different and she bought them by an amount of money.

I'm feeling ancient - quarter of a lb (100 gms) of sweets each as a treat on a Sunday and that was it.

ash28

Dunroamin wrote: »

I'm feeling ancient - quarter of a lb (100 gms) of sweets each as a treat on a Sunday and that was it.

I know, it was the same here, pear drops or pineapple chunks were my favourites and I used to suck them until the roof of my mouth was sore....

Another favourite was a Milky Way or Mars Bar (only got those if I ran messages for the neighbours) and I used to nibble all of the chocolate off them before I started on the filling - could make one last for ages.

Mojisola

FairyPrincessk wrote: »

This is interesting--it just seems to me that they would have focused on rearing cheaper beef since beef cattle take significantly more space and food to rear.

Almost all farming pre-WW2 was extensive rather than intensive. No-one was focusing on rearing cheaper beef - it just was cheaper to produce under the old style of farming than chicken meat.

There weren't the big chicken farms that we have now. Most farmers kept a number of chickens around the farm as a small enterprise among other, more profitable ones.

It was the new breeds of broiler chickens that made it worthwhile building the big sheds and buying in the special foods that were needed.

My rare breeds are still babies at six weeks and still want to hang around with their Mum. If I was growing them on to slaughter, they would need to be 16-20 weeks old before they were big enough to eat. Having a bird that can be killed at 6 weeks means it can be sold a lot cheaper than one that has been fed and looked after for three times as long.

samejh

FairyPrincessk wrote: »

I've never actually bought a chicken with giblets! Not intentionally, it is just that they don't seem to come with them in the supermarket here. Next time I've got a bit of spare money in the food purse, I'll have to buy one at a butcher and try it all out.

Check with the butcher first as you dont always get the giblets just because it is from a butcher.

System

Dunroamin wrote: »

We still eat all of these, don't you?

Liver - No
Sausages - The men have them as a traditional breakfast yes but not on a dinner
Belly Pork - No - Hubby wont look at anything with a bit of fat in
Egg chips and Peas - Not had that for ages
Neck of lamb - Have you seen the cost of it lately? :eek:

Dunroamin

Judi wrote: »

Liver - No
Sausages - The men have them as a traditional breakfast yes but not on a dinner
Belly Pork - No - Hubby wont look at anything with a bit of fat in
Egg chips and Peas - Not had that for ages
Neck of lamb - Have you seen the cost of it lately? :eek:

Apart from the egg and chips (we don't eat chips) we eat all these regularly, mainly because most if what we used to eat is so much tastier and cheaper than what many people eat these days.