Balanced Meals–1941

Front Page, Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook, (c) 1941

While Mrs. Allen gave us food for thought (get it?  food for thought?  I crack myself up, sometimes…okay, just humor me, at least…) about how to “Balance the Ration,” as Kathy noted in the comments, it was a tad complex in the way she wrote it.

Six year later, Better Homes and Gardens tried to make it a little more simple.  They cut the food groups down to three and listed eight short guidelines.  Tomorrow, I will share with you their “wartime update” that looks very different than this list (even though it still contains the same copyright date).

Note: The Food Classifications Chart is laid out in columns in the cookbook but I didn’t know how to do the formatting to replicate it here.  Try to visualize the three groups as column headings with subheadings below them.  Also note that many foods are repeated in several columns so we can get “two-fers” from them.

Balanced Meals

A safe rule for providing well-balanced meals is to select a wide variety of foods and to include for each person in the family in each day’s meals the following:

1. At least one pint of whole milk for each adult and one quart for each child.  part of the milk may be used for cooking.
2. One serving of meat, fish, or poultry.
3. One egg or at least 4 or 5 a week.
4. One serving of cereal as breakfast food or in pudding.
5. Two vegetables, besides potatoes—one a leafy or raw vegetable.
6. Two fruits–one rich in Vitamin C.
7. Some butter or other fat rich in Vitamin A.
8. Other foods to satisfy the appetite.

Food Classification Chart

Include in every meal food from each of these three groups

Group 1: Body-Building and Repairing

Protein–Meat, Fowl, Fish, Oysters, Milk, Gelatine, Eggs, Cheese, Dried Vegetables

Minerals-Calcium–Milk, cheese, cauliflower, oranges, oysters, navy beans, celery, eggs, fresh vegetables, lean meat

Minerals-Phosphorous–Liver, lean meat, fish, milk, oysters, navy beans, canned peas, whole-wheat cereals, oatmeal, fresh vegetables, eggs

Minerals-Iron–Liver, heart, oysters, lean beef, greens, molasses, eggs, whole-wheat cereals, oatmeal, dried fruits, nuts

Iodine–Cod liver oil and seafoods.

Group 2: Heat and Energy

Fat--Butter, bacon, cream, lard, margarine, vegetable or salad oils, nuts

Sugar–Sugars, candy, sweet fruits, honey, sirups, jam and jelly

Starch–Cereals and grain products, flour and flour products, potatoes, dried beans and peas, corn

Group 3: Body-Regulating and Protective

Water–Milk, other beverages, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits

Vitamin–See chart on page four (not included in this blog posting)

Minerals–See chart under Body-building and Repairing

Roughage–Whole-grain cereal, raw vegetables and fruits, cooked vegetables and fruits

*****

One thing that jumped out at me was how little food we need to have for a balanced diet for the day.  For instance, the recommendation is only one serving of meat, fish or poultry per day.  Some of hamburgers served in restaurants and fast food joints would satisfy a couple week’s worth of servings using the recommendations outlined above!

But seriously, the American Heart Association says that the American diet generally contains too much protein (and they are vehemently against high protein diets that restrict carbohydrates).  To help us figure out how much protein we need in a day, Medicinenet.com says:

Ideally, you should consume 0.36 grams of protein for every pound of body weight, according to recommended daily allowances (RDA) set by the Food and Nutrition Board. So if you weigh 170 pounds, you need about 61 grams of protein each day.

Protein should also make up approximately 15% of your total daily caloric intake, also according to the RDA. In a diet of 1,800 calories a day, for example, about 270 of those calories should come from protein.

So what does 0.36 grams come out to when converted to ounces?  A measly .013.  That’s it!  A person weighing 150 pounds needs only 1.95 ounces of protein per day from ALL food sources!  That’s it!

If that isn’t enough to shock you into getting out that food scale (I know that I’m sitting here totally shocked by this turn of events), those beloved Drs. Roizen and Oz in their book You on a Diet point out that protein that isn’t needed by our muscles gets turned into glucose which then gets converted to fat if you can’t use it for energy (their explanation is a little more complex but that Big Beefy Burger really CAN land on the hips!).

Another thought that comes to mind is that since the early 1970′s environmentalists have been encouraging us to eat less meat (See “Rethinking the Meat Guzzler” from the New York Times for a thought provoking article).  They encourage us to have a meat-free night* but many people balk at that idea.  Perhaps we can make a difference by simply reducing our portion sizes from even a quarter pound burger to the RDA recommended serving size.

If we truly want to live like our grandmothers, we would eat less meat…which would put us squarely in the modern world, too.

What do you think?

*I want to acknowledge that people of various faiths have had a variation of this practice for a very, very long time.