What Grandma knew...

Hello everyone,

did you ever think about the way people used to eat forty years ago?
I have done so a lot during the last months, and it´s astonishing what comes back to mind.
When I was a small child, I was living with my grandparents. My Granny used to cook everything herself (no store-bought food or frozen meals for us), and we had breakfast, lunch, consisting of a main course and a dessert, and dinner in the guise of sandwiches and a salad every day.
Some time after I entered school, my parents moved in with us.
So, out of my Granny´s fridge, there were five people who had to be fed.
And just how big was that fridge? It was a tabletop-high model, plus there was a freezer in the cellar. And the fridge had enough empty room in it to allow for putting several small bowls with the dessert for the day into the fridge.Before you think we were grocery shopping every day, we went once a week, with just two bags that were small enough to carry, and after my parents moved in, my Dad drove to the farmer´s market for produce- which also fit into a single transport box- and we could, from a "mobile milkman" who came by with a big rolling shop, get our milk and yoghourt twice a week.
And everything that needed cooling went into that fridge.
It was enough food for everyone in the family. I can´t remember any occasion when someone would have had to go hungry because there wasn´t any food.
So, what we had of food was definitely enough for the five of us.
It was eaten off the low-diameter plates I mentioned in my last post, and it was served in portions that nowadays would make you say, that can´t be enough. But it was enough.
Even the dessert came in smaller sizes, as in "pudding made from 250 ml of milk divided by five bowls".

Today, we have a fridge twice the size of my Grandma´s, and until recently, it ended up stuffed to the point where the door threatened to burst open after every shopping expedition.
And there is just the two of us, my DH and myself.

So, again, twice as much space and half as many people to feed means four times as much food per person.
Some of that went to feed the trashcan- that is another post altogether- the rest we "waisted".

Come to think of it, it is not very likely that DH and myself or any other people should have a radically different genetic makeup from the generation of our grandparents.

So, why should we need to eat that much more food?

I have started to do my shopping using public transport and using a shopping-bag the size of my Granny´s again. I think she was up to something there. And there is free room in my fridge even after putting away my purchases.
There is also free room between my belt and my waistline.
I try to remember what the portions were at home. And remind myself that they were sufficient. Nobody needs to eat a pound of meat in one sitting. And my shape says thank you.


Julia