The Good Old Days

Matthew Yglesias:

After scarfing down a quesadilla from the Chili’s Too (which apparently is what Brinker International calls Chili’s outlets that don’t serve babyback ribs) between flights at the Milwaukee Airport yesterday evening, I was all prepared to start thinking up a post on the baleful impact of travel on the American diet. Then I got on the plane and read this in Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848:

The American of 1815 ate wheat and beef in the North, corn and pork in the South. Milk, cheese, and butter were plentiful; potatoes came to be added in the North and sweet potatoes in the South. Fruits appeared only in season except insofar as women could preserve them in pies or jams; green vegetables, now and then as condiments; salads, virtually never. (People understood that low temperatures would help keep food but could only create a cool storage place by digging a cellar.) Monotonous and constipating, too high in fat and salt, this diet nevertheless was more plentiful and nutritious, particularly in protein, than that available in most of the Old World. The big meal occurred at noon.

Someone I was talking to referred to supper as dinner.  I had to clarify if that meant lunch or supper, because many farmers I knew called lunch dinner, but every town person I knew who called a meal dinner referred to supper.  Our family never used the word dinner, so we didn't have that confusion.  For the most part, this diet sounds like mine, except it doesn't mention beer.