this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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chapotraphouse
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It seems like people think "oh, they only ate roughly one American meal's worth of meat a week/month? Must have been all at once as a treat then," instead of the more likely case of an ounce or two a day going into a family's boiled grain slop or stew to flesh it out and make it more palatable, tallow finding its way into various things, marrow ending up in stocks, etc. It's the quantity and role of meat in American diets that's just a "within the last century" sort of development, not its presence at all.
Like people weren't going and getting a double cheeseburger with a week's wages once a month, they were getting (or rationing) a half pound of salted pork or beef or sausage once a week/month and using it as an ingredient in other dishes.
perpetual stews were really common back in the day for sure
also like i said, its pretty trivial even now to go fishing for food despite the massive reduction in marine life. especially in northern europe, it was very common to eat fish all the time. we also know the inuits had an almost purely seal, whale, berries, and fish diet. plains tribes also had pretty high meat diets.
idk, i just think its revisionist to act like high meat intake is a new thing. plenty of historical conditions made high meat intake the only way to do things. obviously eating such high amounts of beef cant be good for you, but its not like people lived particularly long in the eras we're talking about (though if you lived past 40 odds are youd live to semi-normal life expectancy these days), so that wouldnt catch up with them.