And what kind of meat? My grandparents from Korea ate beef and pork once a year, at festivals and special occasions, when they were young. This is the early 20th century, during the Japanese occupation. That’s what they told me.
In my mum’s primary school, again in Korea, when she was young (in the 60s), she was envied by other students because she would get a fried egg with her rice in her lunch box. Many other students just ate rice. She told me they would sit around her and enjoy the smell of her egg.
Sources of meat don’t have to be cattle, of course. Birds, fish, lizards etc.
Here in Spain there is presently a big debate in politics about ‘macro-granjas’, which are industrial sized farms. A minister said that we should favor locally owned, smaller farms and also reduce meat consumption and the right wing are having a field day attacking him, saying that the Spanish left wants to take away our meat. Like if we don’t have meat everyday there’s something wrong.
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Every day. Not necessarily for dinner, but then at least in the form of cold cuts as toppings on their lunch. But still regularly as dinner as well, as meat has, for the last 100 or so years, been pretty well engrained in national cuisine, though you don’t have to go back much father, before meat starts to become more of a luxury.
My paternal grandparents were born just before the war, and thus were kids through the rationing during and in the immediate aftermath of the war, but part of said rationing was, that meat was available to all. Not to mention, my paternal grandfather came from a line of butchers, and my dad is a butcher too, so access to meat is to be expected. My paternal grandmother comes from a farmers family, so there wouldn’t be a lack of access to meat here.
My maternal grandparents are both born just in the years _after_ the war, and thus grew up after rationing had ended. My maternal grandmother was, again, from a farmers family, though noticeably with a tighter budget than my paternal grandparents. She moved out, to work, around age 16, and worked as a nurse (did her whole working life, now she’s retired) with which ofc. comes access to the dinners and lunches served to the elderly she cared for as well. No need to serve nurses and the elderly different dishes, you know? So meat would be served regularly, in one form or another.
The only one of my grandparents I can think of, who might have eaten less meat, would be my maternal grandfather, who perhaps came out of the poorest background of all. The family moved around to find jobs, his father died when he was only 16, so he had to provide for his mother and siblings, and so on. Sounds like a story, but it is true. Meat was more a rarity in his childhood, but as meat got cheaper, it became more and more accessible.
So while they may not have eaten meat every day, they would all have had the option to at least have meat, mostly pork, as cold cuts.
Once or twice a week. Once on Sunday’s after church and maybe once in a while during the week. Usually before Christmas they would cut a pig (if they could hide it from the communists 😉 ) and make sausage or jar the meats to last until summer. No refrigerators or freezers back then so they would jar the meat with fat around it so it doesn’t go bad. My great grandfather told me he would sometimes go fishing in the creek nearby and get a fish or two. Chicken, rabbit, goose, duck, and pork were the most common meats. Usually you’d have one or two of those and your neighbour might have something else. Beef was not something people consumed as cows were used mostly for dairy products and you didn’t really own the cows, it was the states cows. You just raised them.
My grandparents came from the countryside and were farmers. This was during the period of communism so meat was not “available to buy” for ordinary people.
I know my dad still hates carrot because he had to eat it when there was no meat. He was born in the 50s.
My grandparent was a shepherd so the meat was plenty. Most of the winter it was either lamb meat or chickens.
There’s a big difference between my paternal and my maternal grandparents because they came/come from different social classes.
My paternal grandma comes from Greece and she grew up during WWII (Nazi-occupation) and later the civil war, which was even worse. The degree of poverty in which she grew up is almost unfathomable to me. Apparently, she was 7 years old when she saw bread for the first time. Her grandmother regularly took her to the forest where they collected roots, berries, leaves and even bugs. Literally anything that was somehow eatible. They didn’t have a kitchen in the modern sense but merely a room with an open fireplace. My grandma came to Switzerland around the age of 20, where she tasted chocolate for the first time. The guy who brought her to Switzerland – my grandpa – was rich for her standards but very poor for Swiss standards. His father was a very abusive alcoholic, his mother had severe mental health issues. My grandpa had a steady job but he didn’t earn much and from his small salary, he had to support my grandma (who couldn’t work because she didn’t speak any German) and soon also there first child, my dad. My dad grew up in a very small and run-down apartment and from what he told me, eating meat was definitely something special in their family. It was something you had maybe twice a month.
By contrast, my maternal grandparents both came from well-off/bourgious backgrounds. I think my maternal grandma’s dad was a lawyer and my maternal grandpa’s father owned a general store where he sold colonial goods. Things like exotic fruits and ivory were considered luxury items at the time (early 1900s) and selling them was a profitable business. My grandpa became a photographer, which at the time, was still a highly prestigious profession. This was the 1940s and 1950s, when regular people didn’t own photo cameras or know how they worked. My maternal grandparents ended up owning two shops where they sold and repaired cameras, developed photos and also trained apprentices. My mom told me that when she was a child (early 1960s), her family had several salaried employees; a housekeeper, a full-time nanny, a gardener and a cook. Needless to say, my mom and her family weren’t starving. They had meat or fish pretty often, like several times per week. These days that’s not very special anymore but at the time, it absolutely was. Although Switzerland hadn’t been devastated by WWII, most people were still quite poor. Most people had enough to survive but they certainly weren’t living like kings. During the war, even my grandparents had to cut down on a lot of luxuries because food was rationed. However, my grandpa apparently had some connections, which helped him to get things that other people didn’t get. For example he would get meat or sausages from local farmers (a huge luxury during the war) in return for a couple of favors on his part.
My grandparents from my mothers side were farmers on a large enough farm that they ate really well and even had employed people there as well. Of course it was seasonal so they would eat more meat in the autumn when they would slaughter animals and more fish in the spring. Still, I would guess there would be at least some roast everyday with other food. The food would have been really wholesome.
My grandparents from my fathers side were not that well off since my grandfather was an army man and only had a small plot of land. He of course would have been fed well enough in the barracks but it would have been less so for the rest of the family. And when he was young he was a war orphan from a poor background so he grew 20 cm when he got in to the army since he got so much more food.
1-4 times a week. It helps when you live on a farm. Whenever they slaughtered an animal they would eat meat more often. Sometimes there were lean seasons with less meat and more veggies. Of course there were shortages and regulations during the war and people ate less meat and more beets, swedes, potatoes and berries. As far as I know there were never shortages of dairy, eggs and meat in their home during peace time. Regulations went on until 1954.
Can’t believe what it must be like to envy someone because they get to eat an egg a day. But it also made me realize that us modern people could manage well with less too.
When my grandparents were young there were foodrations, because of the war. So I suspect it was scarce, like basically everything, even though they all lived in rural areas.
Every single day. On my mother’s side they would’ve had sausages, fish and cured meat; on my father’s side they would’ve had fish almost every day and had pork, beef or lamb when they weren’t eating fish.
There are stories from grandparents that you would eat meat once a week – on Sundays.
Here in Austria it would typically have been pork but people in the countryside would also have kept other animals like chickens or rabbits so that was an option, too.
As in food cooked with meat, almost daily.
My German grandparents were born in the 20s in urban environments.
While meat consumption was near the lowest point in German history, it still meant that small amount of meat especially cured ones were used for cooking and also eaten as cold cuts.
A few pieces of chopped bacon can go a long way in a dish flavor wise.
As children they had less priority than the bread earning family members, so if stew was made they might have only gotten potatoes/dumplings etc. with sauce and vegetables and not proper pieces of meat but rather whatever fell completely apart. On my grandma’s side they were quite poor, but had rabbits on the balcony for special occasions and my great grandfather was especially fond of eating cats. Despite living in the city, he was quite the nature guy that would force the whole family of 8 to hike on weekends and he was no stranger to small game poaching. He would encourage the boys to shoot fish, birds etc. with their air rifles.
My grandpa’s parents were relatively well off for the time, but left him extremely early with a brewers family as caretakers, which then were his proxy family. So he actually grew up quite poor while his parents were partying and working all over Germany.
They really faced famine and not having access to meat during the late years of the war and the postwar years. So rather in their late teenage years and early adulthood and not in childhood.
My other grandparents grew up poor in a Latin American county, where meat production was already very high and they could afford cheap cuts and preserved of meat regularly in small amounts. Not eating meat was rather a factor of the Catholic meat free days.
My grandparents are all dead,and have been for many years,but they (and my parents) told me something about this when I was younger.
I had two very different sides of the family.My mothers side were pretty well off.However,as they lived in a place next to the sea (I still live in a city near the sea) they ate fish and seafood much more frequently than meat.They also ate a lot of sweet stuff…cakes,biscuits.
My fathers side were the opposite,pretty poor.They rarely ate proper meat at all…mostly they ate pasta and bread,and vegetable soup.If they ate meat,it was the traditional offal which is the street food of my city.Intestines,spleen,tripe…that kind of stuff.Cheap meat!
My grandfather on that side used to tell stories of catching rabbits when they went into the countryside (a very long walk from the city)and also of stealing oranges from farmer’s trees…a dangerous activity here in Sicily!
My grandparents grew up between the 1930s and 1950s and, like so many of their time, meat was not eaten every day (approximately once a week, because it was more expensive). Then my grandparents experienced the Italian economic miracle in the late 1950s, which radically changed the habits of Italians.
As for the type of meat, I think it was beef, pork and chicken.
My grandparents on my father side, Italian, ate fish more than meat.
Durning the war my great grandad was in a concentration camp and obviously didn’t eat anything other than raw shit covered potatoes Germans threw in their toilet which he had to dig out.
After the war they were poor. They had family who were farmers on both sides so they we’re able to get vegetables and eggs easily, and my great grandfather loved to fish and living in Venice he had access to very rich sea life, so stuff like eel or squid, sardines or various shellfish were common. They also ate meat such as snails or frogs which they could forage. A lot of this is free food so they could spend money on stuff like flour for making pasta, beans and lentils or meat cuts like liver or other meats like chicken, turkey or cow occasionally which they’d make soup of. Lamb was on the menu as well occasionally.
My mothers side, Norwegian, mostly ate fish. They’re from the north and had access to well priced good fish. They also ate meat. Fresh vegetables was difficult to get in the north. Potatoes, onions and some other root vegetables were what you could get. They weren’t impacted much by the war personally other than the obvious poverty durning, but they both landed decent jobs pretty quickly after. As time went on a bunch of vegetables were introduced to the north via better transport and storage and they quickly introduced more vegetables to their diet, but fish or some cured meat was generally always part of the meal.
I know from tellings that my grandparents experienced some harshness regarding food supply as children directly following WW2, and I’m guessing meat would’ve been a once a week kinda deal back then, according to them occasionally including some rather unusual donors like pigeons. It seems to have shaped them as eaters until the present because I estimate they eat generous portions of warm lunches with meat at least five times a week, never offer me any meat free dishes besides pancakes and also include meat in practically every supper in the shape of cold cuts or spreadable sausage on their bread presumably because a less meaty diet is equivalent to post-war rationing and insufficient nutrition in their eyes.
My grandparents on both sides was born around 1905, and was farmers. The farms was around 30-40 ha in size, and had a farm hand, and maid living in their house to help out.
They were hardworking, and I would expect they had meat every day.They would slaughter a pig every month, and freeze the meat in the community freezing house.
The extended family consisted typicaly of 3 kids, two parents, two grand parents, and 2-3 staf.
They would eat everything on the pig, nothing was wasted.
The farms would have some work horses, 50 to 150 pigs, 5 to 15 milking cows, chickens, some cats, and maybe a dog.
The main crops was for feedstock, and would be barley, beats, and hay.
The main crop for consumption would be potatoes, but they had cabbage, onions, strawberry, And fruits like pear, and apple. I one counted that my parents farm garden had 35 things you could eat.
I have just lokked the 4 different farms up on goggle where my grandparents was living until the 1920’s.The farms houses (living quarters) is having a ground floor of 150 to 200 m2, and they all had attics.
The building for the live stock, and feed stock are harder to meassure on google since most of them have been rebuilt the last 120 years. But the live stock and feed stock buildings seems to be Approx 500m2.
I think my grandmother said that usually only during Christmas, but sometimes they had minced meat. Baltic herring very often.
My paternal grandparents very often as they hunted. Which is why my dad hates game.
I’m old enough to have grandparents who were born around the turn of the century. Weekdays, mostly small amounts of meat added to pease pudidng or stew type meals. Also sausages, likely with a low meat content. On Sunday unless times were especially tough, there would be roast meat, maybe beef or pork. But the first course was Yorkshire pudding with gravy to fill the kids up before the small amount of meat.
Meat was rationed until 1954 in the UK. None of them were farmers, butchers or rich so they were limited to what they were entitled to through their ration books or what they could poach.
They really don’t eat much meat in comparison to their children and grandchildren. Even these days it’s much more common for them to eat fish over meat (though fish and seafood is also more representative of my region’s cuisine). They eat meat maybe once a week.
They’re so used to having bread during meals because back then that’s how you’d fill your stomach. They’re always perplexed whenever I have lunch with them and don’t feel like having any bread.
Grandparents on one side that I know more of were born 1918 and 1911. They married in the 1940s and ate meat at least once a day. They started every morning with open sandwiches with butter and smoked pork and black coffee. They continued this habit until they died, though they did add tomatoes also at some point. Grandmother lived until she was 100 and grandfather until his late 80s when he succumbed from chronic injuries from the war.
They were farmers and had pigs and chicken which they slaughtered themselves and made sausages that were preserved all year. So they had meat almost every day, not fresh meat though. I think they didn’t eat meat on Friday though because they were catholics.
Spain goes the right way. Industrial farming is the worst but I don’t really think they can succeed. I’m surprised it’s so little resistance. I keep my fingers crossed.
Btw, meet 1-2 per week is sufficient. It’s just commercials convinced us we either need pork fish or chicken for a dinner every night
My parents, both grew up really poor, living in a shack type of poor, and i know my father only tasted cow stake when he was 16.
He also didn’t drink a lot of milk growing up.
Bad luck being poor in a poor country during a dictatorship.
Edit: to add my father was born in 1948, just for time reference.
Probably on a daily base because they all grew up on farms so they all probably had a pig or two.
from father side probably almost daily as grand grand were liverstock farmers, no idea from mother side
Meat was a luxury, saved just for holidays or special occasion.
Paternal side very often yes. Lots of sausages and huge amounts of moose meat
They were kids growing up right after WWII so meat was not really an option for a while, even a later and they could only eat meat on Sundays for years (if they were lucky).
I’m really not sure. 3 of my grandparents were born in the early 1910s and 1 in 1920.
One grandmother was born in 1910 in a workhouse and then was raised by nuns in a convent. Workhouses were awful places where the poor had to work and live. Conditions were awful. (Think Oliver Twist if you’ve read it or seen a film). No way she ate meat there. People were giveb gruel, which is like a very thin porridge.
The others were more affluent but still working class. One had a car in the 20s, which was very expensive in those days, so I imagine they were able to afford meat regularly.
The other side was a bit poorer. They lived in London, where the working classes ate a lot of cheap fish and shellfish like eels, cockles, muscles and oysters.
They would all have eaten a lot more offal than we do now.
Birth till 1933 – every day
1933 till 1939 – very rarely
1939 – ca. 1949 – weekly
1949 – 1953 – very rarely, maybe every month or two
1953 – death – twice a day
Explanations: Middle class Jewish families in Europe; Hitler; Austerity Policy in young Israel
Almost every day afaik from their stories. Meat shortage was only a thing in the extremly poor and/or city-dwelling families.
My paternal grandpa (born in the 1930s to a well-to-do family) actually had a life-long aversion against lamb and pumpkins, because in 1945, when war ended, his brothers and him were lodged with an farming uncle who lived in the Austrian mountain regions and that’s what they ate all day for the next 2 or so years… cured/cooked lamb and pumpkins in every possible combo.
I haven’t asked, and now it’s too late. But since their childhood coincided with the first world war, I guess not too often.
All my grandparents are dead, so I can’t ask, but in their youth holding animals for slaughter and preparing sausages, hams and other dry meat was a norm for rural population, and urban population used to have relatives among rural population who’d do it for them, so they always had meat. But they ate a lot more vegetables than we do.
When they were kids (1930s) – very rarely. They mainly grew their own meat at the family farm and it depended on what they could afford to kill. So just a few chicken a year for the whole family, probably around christmas and around the hardest work season in ca July. They also sometimes bought fish from friends that were fishermen, but also rarely. It was mainly porridge, potatoes, cabbages, beetroots and rutabagas.
Here are some quotes from old people who were children during the war:
>”We had a few small patches of land, two cows, a horse, a sheep, a pig, a rooster and a few chickens. ”
>”We also exchanged milk for sausages. My mother’s sister’s husband worked one an assembly line at a little sausage factory. Sausages have never tasted as good, as they did back then, when we sometimes got them.”
>”From my early childhood I remember the liquorice pipes and the little raisin boxes, which my mother would by from the village store for us kids. The orange also made an impression on my mind. After the wars I saw an orange in the store again, when the ships had once more started bringing southern fruit, rice, raisins, coffee and other wares which had been gone.”
>”We made all kinds of dishes from herring, we cooked it, fried it, smoked it, we preserved it in vinegar with carrots and onions, we made herring casserole, and we ate salted herring with potatoes.”
>”On Christmas Eve I was given an apple, which my godmother had saved from the summer harvest.”
>”At third grade they fed us fish liver oil for a year. It was terrible to eat it with the same spoon, that we used for the “chaff gruel”. We had gruel five days a week, and once a week we would get pea soup with ham, or meat soup.”
>”On certain days we would queue for herring and blood at the Hakaniemi hall. We would use the blood for blood pancakes.”
>”One morning I went to the store at 6AM, to queue for herrings. By the time I got to the counter, the herrings were gone. Once I was queuing in the milk shop but I had to leave, because I was about to faint.”
>”We were hungry every they, even though we got porridge in the morning, and at noon we bread with butter and viili [a fermented milk product] with which we would mix fried flour, and in the evening we got potato soup.”
>”When I was 10 years there was a scarlet fever epidemic in Helsinki, and I ended up at Aurora hospital. I was there for four weeks. I had anemia, soo they fed me raw egg to give me strength. The eggs were kept in a locked cupboard in my room, to ensure that the right person got them, I guess the hospital also suffered from the food shortage at the hospital.”
Source: https://www.etlehti.fi/artikkeli/vapaa-aika/tuttuja-tarinoita-pula-ajasta
Maternal grandparents: probably meat or fish every day. My grandfather ran a plantation in Surinam and then was governor of some Caribbean islands. In the post-war Netherlands, things were a bit more lean but I have never heard about meat being an exception at their table.
Paternal grandparents: probably meat or fish every day. My grandfather was head engineer of a electricity company in Indonesia and they were quite well-off. Then the war happened and they were starved, neither did survive.
My grandparents were young in the early 1900’s (1910’s and 1920’s) in Sweden, being working class. They ate meat (organ meat – regular meat was non-existent for common people on a daily or even weekly basis) maybe once per week, I guess. They got their main protein from various dairy products and from fish (salted herring or fish caught from a nearby lake).
From what i’ve been told it was a part of their every day diet