Depends on what era you’re talking about.
Even when I was a kid fresh vegetables out of season were rare and there wasn’t that much frozen food. (That’s why TV dinners were exciting.) People lived on overcooked canned green beans and the like.
I’m from New York, and we had Italian places and lots of Chinese places and delis in Queens, but even Manhattan didn’t have the diversity of ethnic food it has today. Indian restaurants? Forget it. Japanese? Benihana. Getting Sukyaki at the Worlds Fair was very exciting.
yeah, whatever. I live in a suburb of Detroit and I can show you markets and restaurants of many ethnicities.
New York City is not the only place that has stuff.
Living when and where? If you were in Greece, feta would be available.
Meanwhile, there are those who have a rather different perspective on food and eating (spoiler: it is too complicated and takes too long).
not sure I like the idea of food with a version number like “1.0” on it
Dude, you’re old!
Even ignoring the fact this isn’t a universal truth, deficiency disorders used to be a lot more common as well.
I wouldn’t go back without a lot of multivitamins, especially vitamin C and iodine, maybe vitamin D depending on how far north (or south) I’d end up.
Agree. We had potatoes- not different varieties of potatoes.
There was white bread and brown bread.
As for spices, I think most folks of my vintage would remember a curry- if it ever was made- was Keens Curry powder and a handful of sultanas.
Without getting too far off track, I often wonder how we never got food poisoning from school lunches. We’d bring them in, they’d sit in the sun most of the morning and we had to eat them or starve.
A) He’s talking about fifty years ago, not today.
B) He never said that New York was unique in terms of available food stuffs.
This thread is not complete with out a link to the Gallery of Regrettable Food. LILEKS (James) :: Institute :: The Gallery of Regrettable Food
The shit healthcare would be the worst part, the lack of food variety would just be a nuisance. I don’t recall the stats but I once read a list of how many different items were available at the grocery in the 90s, 70s, 50s, etc. The variety of items by the current era was gigantic compared to the variety in the past.
I spent a week in another country recently eating rice and black beans, interrupted only by boiled cabbage and salty tinned fishie-bits. One day there was macaroni. On one day there was an egg. It certainly made me appreciate the variety I can access, even from my own garden.
We always ate good when I was a kid, despite grocery stores not having the variety of stuff they carry today. My parents and grandparents gardened and home canned, pickled, and froze stuff. Some of the Pennsylvania Dutch pickles and relishes my mother put up still aren’t commonly encountered. Dad hunted, as did I when I got old enough, so we always had game meat to supplement what the stores offered. Mostly, though, was that we actually cooked on a daily basis. Raw ingredients were easily available to make lots of stuff. Choices were limited only in that we seldom ate out and convenience foods were not big like they are now.
We were made of sterner stuff. There was no neosporin, nor waterless hand sanitizer at the door to the grocery store. We got dirty, sunburned, hurt, we coped.
IMO, a lot of “food poisoning” cases are probably norovirus (aka “stomach flu.”) Norovirus is the thing which sends people into the bathroom, firing out both ends about 6 hours after a gathering.
It ain’t the food. it’s someone sick being near the food.
You were made of the same stuff, it just got sick and weakened by infection more often.
I was born in 1956 in a village in Cambridgeshire, England.
We did not get a Fridge/Freezer till the late 60’s, so I suppose we ate as many generations had before us.
Milk, Eggs, and Bread were delivered every day. All Local.
The village butcher was supplied by a local slaughter house from local farmers, chickens, beef, pork, pheasant, partridge, pidgin, rabbit, hare etc. My mother would shop for meat either the same day or the day before. Storage was in a cool pantry.
Vegetable were seasonal, and available from a couple of village shops, or grown in your own or a friend/relatives garden. In the winter, either winter vegetables or various preserves were used.
We ate well, as I imagine my ancestors had for 100’s if not 1000’s of years before me.
We were average village people, not the aristocracy.
My husband, an all-American kid and adventurous eater, spent a summer in Nepal once upon a time. He said that all the food, day in and day out, was dal bhat tarkari. Sometimes for a special treat there would be momos.
He lost thirty pounds that summer, he says due to pure boredom with eating.
So yeah, depending on what part of the past (or present) you ended up in, you might get pretty desperate about the food.