1939 America averaged 3500 calories a day!

[jay123]

I came across this in a blog post. Pretty interesting.

The 1939 USDA Yearbook of Agriculture3, “Food and Life”, has a chapter called Present-Day Diets in the United States. It goes into great detail about what people actually ate in the late 30s. White flour. Sugar. Meat. Potatoes. Vegetables. Fruit. Butter. Milk. Eggs. Lots of all of them.


This shows caloric consumption for different regions, and black versus white, among men split up within regions by economic class. Wealthy people ate more.

The bar graph goes up in any given region or racial group by “money spent on food”. Richer families could buy and eat more food in all regions and so they did. No one questioned it. I’m focusing on the wealthiest but the median is around 3500 calories.
The 1939 report channels the data through “him”. The “per capita” numbers presented are per adult male as defined as one “nutrition-requirement unit”. This is just what it was at the time.

Notice the attitude at the time: the more spent on food, the better the diet. There is literally zero hand-wringing in this article about “but watch your calories.” Calories weren’t a problem then. If you made more money, if you were a wealthy person working a sedentary job (bankers, ad executives, lawyers, wall street), you bought and presumably ate more food and it was all to the good. How much food? 4400 calories per day or so. At 4400 calories per day a sedentary male was expected to weigh 154 lbs.

New Yorkers (North Atlantic cities) didn’t even earn the crown of most calories. That honor went to those in Pacific cities, buying 5100 calories of food per day.

The chapter is in the download.

 

[jay123]

What were people eating?​

 

[jordybrunson89]

I find this hard to believe. Do you know how hard it is to eat 3500+ calories of real food?

 

[jay123]

Yeah its very eye opening. I would think with farmers they would have a lot of non exercise activity thermogenesis back then. I have witnessed first hand farmers that were lean, worked the farm, and ate a ton of food and were lean. But the biggie in this study is sedentary wealthy people were eating this way and were supposedly lean. They were eating a lot of butter and milk and starch and fatty meats. That could be a big calorie rich producer for them.

 

[somuch4food]

That's some proof that calories aren't really the problem. Something has changed the way our body manages proteins.

The thing is that there have been so many changes since that time that you can't pinpoint any one thing. Technology, Electricity, Media, Pesticides, PUFAs, Additives, Stressful lifestyle...

 

[jay123]

That's some proof that calories aren't really the problem. Something has changed the way our body manages proteins.

The thing is that there have been so many changes since that time that you can't pinpoint any one thing. Technology, Electricity, Media, Pesticides, PUFAs, Additives, Stressful lifestyle...

Agree. Yes the food they were eating in this study was one ingredient. And I would even say out of the starches the flour was probably processed totally different today. But the one thing that I saw in the study was in the south they had higher Pufa content. I would think that would bring quality of life down.

 

[Peatful]

Thank you for this.

Several years ago I realized this- while reading about the Minnesota Starvation Experiment.
Looking at mukbang eaters; and the natural eaters around me.
And thinking about the phrase: a healthy appetite.

It truly is the answer / key to many issues with folks who end up here.
People are hungry and their bodies have learned to (mal)adapt. We are under stresses of all kinds.
Robust nutrition is essential.

 

[Perry Staltic]

That's some proof that calories aren't really the problem. Something has changed the way our body manages proteins.

A huge change is that people were much more physically active back then.

 

[zwez]

I was actually skeptical of this and did my own analysis on the calories a while back. For the Pacific cities, the population with the highest caloric consumption, i calculated around 3055 calories a day which broke down to around 353 carbs, 136 protein and 122 fat.

 

[soul_rebel]

Calorie rich, whole foods cooked at home is the way to go. That alone would improve health and vitality for many.

 

[animalcule]

Something has happened to the food supply or to our bodies, or both. I have tried the “all in” approach where you just eat to hunger, and I ended up enormous. Even when I eat whole food sources like a potato, I bloat and feel sluggish and gain weight. I rarely ever eat anything and feel energized. Something is very different now compared to then.

I remember watching a documentary on some “blue zone” place, I think Costs Rica, and they were interviewing ppl who were alive before there had been a lot of development, etc. Old people. And they were saying that something had changed about the food. It wasn’t energizing like before, or something like that.

 

[Perry Staltic]

We live in a sedentary culture now. Just to give an idea how different it used to be, Walking or biking a couple of miles to school was the norm for me. 1 hour phys ed class every day; at one school I went to every PE class started with a 440 run around the track, then a half hour of some kind of exercise. Even colleges required phys ed credits to graduate. Then after school wide open play outside until dinner. Or cutting the lawn. We were constantly active.

 

[jay123]

We live in a sedentary culture now. Just to give an idea how different it used to be, Walking or biking a couple of miles to school was the norm for me. 1 hour phys ed class every day; at one school I went to every PE class started with a 440 run around the track, then a half hour of some kind of exercise. Even colleges required phys ed credits to graduate. Then after school wide open play outside until dinner. Or cutting the lawn. We were constantly active.

What is interesting is the the more money people made the more they ate according to the study. And if we think about that then people who usually have jobs where they make more money are more sedentary.

 

[Hugh Johnson]

I find this hard to believe. Do you know how hard it is to eat 3500+ calories of real food?

It's not.

 

[jay123]

It's not.

Agree. I have easily put away 8000 calories in a day. Not that I do that a lot but I have done that.

 

[Beastmode]

I find this hard to believe. Do you know how hard it is to eat 3500+ calories of real food?

Meat, potatoes, full fat milk, butter, lard, cheese, etc can get you there.

My grandma who lived into her mid 90's ate this way for decades. I've done the #'s on her typical day of eating before when she was alive.

Consider, they didn't have this fat phobia back then and ate whole foods.

 

[Perry Staltic]

What is interesting is the the more money people made the more they ate according to the study. And if we think about that then people who usually have jobs where they make more money are more sedentary.

Keep in mind families were bigger in the past, so most of those calories were being consumed by active kids who weren't working desk jobs. Typically, only the dad was.

 

[lampofred]

I read that even peasants would eat at least 4000 calories daily in the Middle Ages (until I read that I was always under the impression that peasants lived in semi-starvation). The ruling class ate even more (but admittedly the ruling class was fat).

 

[jay123]

Keep in mind families were bigger in the past, so most of those calories were being consumed by active kids who weren't working desk jobs. Typically, only the dad was.

Yes. That very well could be true.

 

[jay123]

I think something about this is what I call the "one hit wonders". We all have heard of the "one hit wonder" songs. Well the same goes for food. One ingredient foods without the added garbage. Meat, milk, eggs, cheese, butter, flour, potatoes, rice, fruit. I think everyone gets what I mean. I would also think they were getting natural thyroid in the meats. Keep in mind this study was done during the deprssion too.