https://www.reddit.com/r/AskOldPeople/comments/1h2xdwd/how_much_meat_did_you_eat_growing_up/
created by murrrd on 29/11/2024 at 22:16 UTC
149 upvotes, 431 top-level comments (showing 25)
Where were you, what decades, how much meat did you eat relative to other food?
Comment by AutoModerator at 29/11/2024 at 22:16 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Please do not comment directly to this post unless you are Gen X or older (born 1980 or before). See this post[1], the rules, and the sidebar for details. Thank you for your submission, murrrd.
2: /message/compose/?to=/r/AskOldPeople
Comment by Birdy304 at 29/11/2024 at 22:22 UTC
192 upvotes, 8 direct replies
A lot, meat at most every meal. Eggs and bacon, meat potatoes and a vegetable at dinner. My parents had a freezer and bought half a cow at a time. This was midwest U.S.A. in the mid 50s til late 60s.
Comment by [deleted] at 29/11/2024 at 22:33 UTC
109 upvotes, 4 direct replies
We had a meat, a vegetable and a starch, with a glass of milk for every dinner.
Comment by restingbitchface2021 at 29/11/2024 at 22:28 UTC
63 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Grew up on a farm. There was always meat. My grandma cooked every part of the cow.
I don’t eat much meat now.
Comment by Eurogal2023 at 29/11/2024 at 22:29 UTC
49 upvotes, 5 direct replies
Grew up in Scandinavia. Some maybe unusual meats for the US citizens here:
Frozen whale beef from the supermarket was a cheap alternative for people on low incomes, like also canned meatballs made from reindeer meat. Another cheap option was canned "fiskeboller", like meat balls made from fish...
Comment by Hoppie1064 at 29/11/2024 at 22:27 UTC
46 upvotes, 1 direct replies
My dad was a meat and potatos guy. So mom was a meat and potatoes cook.
There were a few times when work was slow when the meat was chicken more often. But both lived through the Great Depression, THE Dust Bowl and WW11. Mom was good at stretching a dollar.
Comment by CreativeMusic5121 at 29/11/2024 at 22:22 UTC
23 upvotes, 1 direct replies
Not a lot, I grew up in the 70s and meat was very expensive. Chicken was a lot cheaper so we had a lot of that, and no one liked fish. We ate a lot of starches (potatoes, rice, spaghetti) to fill us up, and there was always bread and butter on the table.
Comment by Stellaaahhhh at 29/11/2024 at 22:39 UTC
18 upvotes, 2 direct replies
Born in 67, western north carolina-My parents and grandparents both made a big garden so in the summer about once or twice a week we'd just have fresh vegetables- fried squash or okra, corn on the cob or creamed corn, green beans, mashed or fried potatoes, and cornbread.
In fall and winter, occasionally we'd just have a big pot of pinto beans and cornbread, or homemade vegetable soup.
My dad and grandpa fished so spring through early fall we'd sometimes have fresh caught fried trout, with slaw and fried potatoes.
They also had a few cattle and would have one butchered once a year for the freezer so we had beef pretty often, sometimes roast or steak. but usually hamburger for patties or meatloaf, or in vegetable beef soup.
Fried chicken almost every Sunday, pork chops, bacon or sausage with eggs and biscuits and gravy for breakfast on weekends.
I don't remember my grandmother using bought canned food much except salmon for salmon patties, and occasionally spam for fried spam sandwiches.
Now I'm hungry. Lol.
Comment by Ill-Excitement9009 at 29/11/2024 at 22:25 UTC*
17 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I grew up on a farm. We always had a cow and a pig in a fattening pen ....so....we had meat and vegetables every day until I left at age 17.
Forty years later, I live in a big city and I eat a couple of ounces of meat per day.
Comment by ikokiwi at 29/11/2024 at 22:28 UTC
14 upvotes, 1 direct replies
New Zealand - probably quite a lot compared to most countries, but up until the age of about 8 I absolutely hated it. I used to hold it in my mouth until the folks weren't watching then I'd drop it out the window so Abo (the cat) could get it.
Then I was vegetarian from 20 to 30.
Comment by imadork1970 at 29/11/2024 at 22:35 UTC
16 upvotes, 0 direct replies
A metric fuckton. Dad butchered his own meat.
Comment by Maleficent-Music6965 at 29/11/2024 at 22:41 UTC*
11 upvotes, 1 direct replies
We had a little meat every day, not a lot. We ate tons of homegrown vegetables, plums, apples, pears. And we would pick blackberries, muscadine, and scuppernogs.
ETA- Momma remarried when I was 7. My stepdad did a lot of hunting and we all went fishing together very often. So lots of deer, squirrels, doves, occasionally a duck or wild turkey. Lots of bream, bass, crappie, and catfish.
Comment by TheGreatOpoponax at 29/11/2024 at 22:35 UTC
10 upvotes, 2 direct replies
We had some kind of meat with every dinner. It ran the gamut from those super thin pork chops to hamburger to the unoliest meat of all, liver.
This was in the 70s.
Comment by Grandmabearsglass at 29/11/2024 at 22:32 UTC
17 upvotes, 3 direct replies
Ok, I am going to probably get some slack for this. I only ate what ever meat was forced upon me growing up. I was forced to sit at the table and finish my dinner. Hungry Helper, I threw up in a napkin over and over again until it was gone. I am proud of not making my children or grandchildren ever eat anything that they do not want, no matter what. I did not like the texture of certain meat and had a really difficult time trying to make my family understand the issue. Anyway, never enjoyed eating meat and still have a hard time depending on cut and how it’s prepared.
Comment by littleoldlady71 at 29/11/2024 at 22:29 UTC
7 upvotes, 1 direct replies
My mother-in-law used to talk about how she (German, meat every meal) married her husband (Norwegian, meat once a day) got married in the 40’s, they compromised on twice a day.
Comment by virtual_human at 29/11/2024 at 22:40 UTC
7 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Meat is and always has been the main item at dinner. Less so with breakfast and lunch.
Comment by Optimal-Ad-7074 at 29/11/2024 at 22:41 UTC
6 upvotes, 0 direct replies
dinner was the classic meat + veg + some form of starch. my mom was not a very motivated cook though so i didn't like a lot of it. i grew up in south africa as a white kid, so red meat was far more available and affordable in my childhood than it is now.
produce was also freely available in my childhood. my mom kept a 'fruit bowl' and you could always eat whatever you liked out of that. plus, every house i lived in until about 15 had at least one kind of fruit tree. from my memory:
- mini peach orchard, avocado tree, loquat tree, plum tree, and the neighbours grew a few kinds of grapes.
- peach tree plus a passionfruit vine all over the backyard building. oh right, and a mulberry tree that was legendary until it had to be removed. it was dropping three inches of fruit all oever the sidewalk and blocking pedestrians. edit: just remembered the lemon tree.
- apricot tree plus grapevines.
i grew up pretty spoiled in non-material benefits.
Comment by MooseMalloy at 29/11/2024 at 22:46 UTC
6 upvotes, 1 direct replies
A dinner wasn't dinner if there wasn't "meat and potatoes".
But that was the only meal that *had to* have meat.
Lunch was 50/50... your packed school sandwich could be anything from cheese whiz to egg salad to roast beef.
Breakfast was usually porridge in the Winter and cereal in the not Winter.
Comment by sqplanetarium at 29/11/2024 at 22:22 UTC
18 upvotes, 0 direct replies
All of our dinners and many lunches had meat. I’ve been vegetarian for decades now, though.
Comment by Ineffable7980x at 29/11/2024 at 22:32 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I was a child in the '70s and a teen in the '80s and at home we ate meat with almost every meal
Comment by SinD2315 at 29/11/2024 at 22:40 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
A lot of meat. We had a large deep freezer and my parents regularly filled it with bundles of beef and pork. Roasts, steaks, pork chops, hamburgers, and meatballs just to name a few. Miss my mom’s cooking every day
Comment by Gnarlodious at 29/11/2024 at 22:50 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We grew up on a farm. Beef, lamb, chicken, duck and turkey was common fare.
Comment by Crafty-Shape2743 at 29/11/2024 at 23:10 UTC
8 upvotes, 0 direct replies
We had so little red meat in the years between 1965-1969, I developed severe anemia as a child. We ate a lot of eggs and mackerel (from the pet food section) made into a loaf with a lot of bread. We had a lot of vegetables and beans.
After we moved to Alaska in 1969, dad did subsistence hunting and fishing so we always had moose or caribou and salmon. What we didn’t have was fresh vegetables or citrus until we could afford it in 1974. Along with health and dental insurance. At that point I got my first root canal, 12 fillings and my teeth weren’t wobbly anymore.
There’s *reasons* a balanced diet is important.
Comment by No_Roof_1910 at 29/11/2024 at 22:19 UTC
5 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I ate a lot of fish growing up.
Comment by DNathanHilliard at 29/11/2024 at 22:36 UTC
4 upvotes, 0 direct replies
My childhood was both rural and small town, so I actually ate a lot of meat growing up. Much of it was straight from the butcher and to our freezer.