The Golden Age

Gretchen,  this is an interesting set of observations.  I grew up in Boston but i barely remember the 50's.  i do vividly remember the 60's though!

 

our diet was probably unusual.  My mother was Australian and my Dad was from Boston.  I lived in Australia for two years as an infant.  And i travelled to Australia when i was 6 years old and when i was 14.  we migrated to Australia when i was 16 (1970).

 

My memories of what we ate in the 60's is fairly intact.  Dinners were pretty eclectic.  My favorite Summer dinner was globe artichokes.  we would pull each of the leaves off and dip them in vinaigrette.  We kids would have gladly subsisted on the artichokes alone.  But our Mother insisted we eat our steak before we were allowed to start on the artichokes!  The same story for corn on the cob.

 

Salads were served with almost every meal.  The main basis was iceberg lettuce, carrots and celery.  My mother gradually added in more exotic ingredients such as capsicum and cucumber.  Whenever we ate out I would frantically search for a "Chef's Salad" on the menu and I would have Thousand Island dressing always when eating out.  I gradually moved on to Caesar salad which was always made at the table with great fanfare.

 

In the 60's we did have pasta in our house.  Every week.  Spaghetti with bolognaise sauce (and parmesan cheese and salad).  We also ate my mother's version of "Beef Curry" and other casseroles.

 

Dessert was always ice cream, or Jell-o or Sara Lee chocolate cake.

 

Breakfast was either a piece of fruit or if we were lucky Dunkin' Donuts or Sara Lee Coffee cake.

 

Lunch was in the school cafeteria.  My favorite choices were hamburgers or spaghetti bolognaise.  my lunches always had a side salad.  I would almost always have an ice cream sandwich or an H-Bar.

 

I didn't drink Coke because i didn't like it.  I would always have ginger ale or sprite.

 

Anyway, that is what I remember of the 60's.

 

So, I always thought I was lucky to have had a pretty good diet growing up.  We would ski every weekend and sail and swim all Summer long.  So i had tons of exercise.  and i was slim - but strong.

 

As i got older i started to put on a bit of weight and i adopted a low fat, high carb diet and got slim again.  I followed that diet for 30 years! 

 

So, the year is 2007 and i start getting thirsty and losing weight round about April.  And I get diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes!

 

I believe that I have murdered my pancreas with a high carb diet!  Anyway, I have switched to a low carb diet now.  I take a small dose of gliclazide (extended release).  Exercise daily.  My A1C has gone down from 16.2% at diagnosis (June) to 5.9% (December).

 

The thing that switched me to the low carb idea was YOUR BOOK (it is unknown in the Australian medical community - so I bought it on Amazon).  You see I have always had low cholesterol and horrible triglycerides.  I read your chapter when you had the extra strips and did one day low fat and the next day high fat.  Now even my triglycerides are normal.

 

So, yeah, thanks for that.  I hope my diet information is of some use!

 

 -- Joel.

 

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Oh Plauseeeeee! Fifty years ago we ate exactly what you described and the author of the book you purchased seems to have indeed got his decades mixed up! He must of been referring to his ancestors who ground their own wheat and made their own whole grain breads because, 50 years ago I grew up on Wonder Bread and Little Miss Sunbeam was on the other bread~~both of them white breads. Good job on the article!!!~Sande
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Well...in the home I grew up in,  in the '50s, the bread was always rye. But I desperately WISHED for white bread. Little did I know! 

 

My mother wasn't the greatest cook and didn't really like to cook...she had a repetoire of about 6 recipes. We always had roast chicken on Friday nights...I remember brisket. I don't remember much else, but it definitely didn't include any pasta -- that was just too, too exotic.  I don't remember veggies either, but I do remember the iceberg lettuce salad with thousand island dressing (Best Foods mayo mixed with chili sauce). And always a dessert, usually from the bakery.

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Yes Gretchen, I too can remember well 50 years ago & then some.  I also was raised as you were with the same foods without worry or care for what that deranged author was alluding to.  What a joke.  We were thankful for whole milk, butter, potatoes, peanut butter, etc.

 

In fact there were times when bread & butter was our staple which Mom made because money was hard to come by.  I can even remember one time she made potato chips just to give us something besides the daily staples of meat, vegetable & bread.  What a treat!

 

Regards to ya,

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The 50's was also the time of the "test kitchen" recipes using pkgd/processed products to create some bland conglomerations. My mum was not a good cook & used these abominations regularly. We had lost of fatty (ie cheap) meat & potatoes & a few canned veggies with butter plopped on top. One thing tho is that no one cared for sweets so we rarely had desserts altho my mum sometimes served pudding,custard or ice cream on Sundays. We also did have fruit in the house most of the time & I was allowed to stop at the fruit stand & get whatever I wanted & put it on the bill. I loved plums & once ate so many I got hives. Unlike our neighbors we also had pasta sometimes & also stew & goulash. I hated them all. cappie
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I am a tad bit younger than some folks online here, but at least you all got red meat and other stuff. I am a product of the "If Betty Crocker didn't make a mix for it, it's not happening here" generation! I didn't know what the hamburger looked like BEFORE it was swimming in powdered cheese, butter and milk. Never had real macaroni and cheese only the box stuff. My mom was not a cook. She managed a restaurant so our big meals were done at the store she worked at. I knew what industrial food was LONG before I went to school lol. One of the few things my mother made, which you couldn't pay me to eat, was a macaroni salad that had cooked elbow macaroni, tomatoe juice and sugar. I couldn't stand the stuff. She also made cole slaw dressing that was mixed with so much sugar it was not disolved when we ate it. A cook my mother was not. My dad on the other hand, made a heck of a spaghetti sauce!

My grandmother was a wonderful cook and I spent summers with her.  She was old West Virginia country where a meal wasn't a meal unless the table was full of  food. Her homemade apple  butter was at EVERY meal and she made THE BEST bread pudding (from the heels of the wonder bread bag)  So I guess I had the best (worst) from both worlds!

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I grew up on small New England farm for our own use in the fifties in a community of the same. Our family and those who I knew mostly ate food raised/grown at home. Primarily beef, chicken, veggies, berries, plus milk, eggs and butter.

 

For dinner, we ate meat or chicken, potatoes and lots of veggies - fresh in summer and frozen or canned in winter. And always a huge stack of bread (usually the fluffy store bought kind) on the table or sometimes hot biscuits. Everything, including steak, was slathered in loads of butter. Pasta - yes, made from scratch mac'n'cheese, spagh & meatballs or am chopsuey covered in melted cheese. Casseroles now and then. Soups/stews often were a meal - not a prelude - eaten with tons of bread/biscuits and butter or sometimes with dumplings. Saturday was always - like ALWAYS - baked beans, hotdogs and brown bread.

 

Lunch was one or more sandwiches of slices of last night's meat and mustard, chicken & mayo, or PB&J. Homemade cookies and/or a piece of cake or maybe an apple or orange.

 

Breakfast was cereal - cold in summer hot in winter - swimming in whole milk and heaps of sugar - and buttered toast. And milk from our own cows to drink. Lots of eggs (floating in butter) from our own hens.

And always a multi-vitamin plus a fish oil capsule in winter.  

 

Just about every meal had dessert. Ice cream for Sunday evening, otherwise, cookies, cake, pudding or pie - all homemade. Or shortcake with berries we picked, in summer. Stewed berries that had been frozen in the summer, on hot biscuits was a common winter fare. Even breakfast has its share of sweets in muffins or donuts.

Snacks could include any dessert food or bread and butter with honey (wild), molasses or sugar.

 

Besides the berries growing wild on our land, fruit was an apple or orange because they were the cheapest. Bananas when Dad could negotiate a boxful or over ripe ones. I'm not sure I knew they should be yellow and firm until I left home!

 

Almost everything was homemade. I remember the derision and dire predictions that cake mixes met with when they were first becoming popular.

Quantities were huge, except on store bought items which (except for bread) were rationed.

PS - fish or game graced our table when Dad, and later my brothers, had any luck hunting or fishing. Even Mom brought in her share of venison during deer hunting season. But that was all pragmatic not sport.  

 

 

 

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To be honest I don`t think I had even heard of wholegrains in the fifties.  We would regularly buy pies and dessert was practically never fruit but `pudding`.

The only thing is that most people didn`t have a car so we walked much more than today.  Also TV was very limited so children spent their free time playing in the garden or in the road. 

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I am from that Golden age (age 51) and was diagnosed with diabetes at age 13. Thinking back, my doctor was a quack and it's also true, foods were not healthy then.  I have to add, I believe the STRESS in the lives of everyone today is MUCH greater than 50 years ago......

what do you think Gretchen ...maybe added stress has increased the damage to our organs ?

-rosie

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I wonder if there's just not more REPORTING of diabetes than before. 
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