A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s • Hacker News Board

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#231

Post by devilbunny » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 5:28 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #122

morsch wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, Bacon-Wrapped Dates. But I suppose the question is not so much if it'd be any good, but whether it's common. And I've never seen bacon wrapped banana, either.

Bacon-wrapped dates are AFAIK a relatively recent thing in the US. Bacon-wrapped scallops--which are actually a bit hard to get right (i.e. both the bacon and the scallops baked reasonably)--were the more traditional cocktail party item.

Bacon-wrapped dates, under the name of "devils on horseback", are documented (by the OED, no less) in an American magazine of 1885. So... not that recent. They certainly were a thing by the 1970s, then faded, then came back.

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#232

Post by tetromino_ » Fri, Apr 08, 2022, 7:50 PM UTC

helpfulmandrill wrote: post #102

Reading some of the stuff people used to eat, I have a really hard time understanding how obesity is worse today than back then.

It's an intriguing question! People of the early 20th century ate too much fat, too much sugar, too many carbs, too many calories, and yet did not grow obese. There is an interesting paper [1] making a strong case that the cause of the 21st century obesity epidemic is an unidentified environmental contaminant which (1) causes obesity in both humans and other mammals; (2) accumulates in major river valleys; (3) started noticeably affecting the US around 1980, and by now has spread worldwide.

Some possible candidates proposed for such a contaminant include animal antibiotics, PFAS, and lithium (e.g. in industrial lubricants).

[1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6miu9BsKdoAi72nkL/a-contamin...

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#233

Post by iostream24 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 1:40 PM UTC

Well, that was a lovely read, I’m off to the soda fountain for a salad then, I guess.

Re: A Square Meal – Foods of the ‘20s and ‘30s

#234

Post by iostream24 » Sat, Apr 09, 2022, 1:42 PM UTC

VoodooJuJu wrote: post #139

camhart wrote: post #46

I can't stand "normal" milk from the US... the stuff you buy in the plastic cartons. It taste horrid. Milk from Germany? I love it. Milk from Darigold in the paper cartons? I love it. Milk from Darigold in the plastic? Tastes like garbage. Organic milk in a paper carton? Some is good, some taste like garbage. I didn't realize how different milk tastes until I spent some time in Germany. Prior to that I just thought I…

There are a lot of factors that go into milk and its taste. There's: pasteurized (most American milk), homogenized, ultra-pasteurized or UHT (which most German milk probably is), raw milk, how quickly it was cooled-down, cream content, and then there's the variance between dairies based on things such as breed, feed, time of year, quality of life, etc. We can't accurately make blanket statements about one country's m…

I read “there are a lot of tractors that go into milk”