Why did people used to eat more but not get fat? Making sense of memes

The city goes to sleep, grandma wakes up and starts twisting a soggy bun into your tomorrow’s cutlets. This habit is definitely older than you, and possibly older than your mom. The bread in the cutlet serves two purposes: to feed you faster and to use less meat in the process. But with this diet, why are your parents so slim in all of your high school and college photos? After all, how many crusts of baton buried among the minced meat and twisted carrots, can not count. Let’s find out together with an expert how it used to be possible to eat so many carbohydrates, but still maintain health and figure.

Certified nutritionist, specialist in the correction of eating behavior

The myth that people in the USSR ate better and were healthier is an illusion. Both in terms of food habits and food in general. Food was designed to feed people quickly and cheaply. That’s why there was more butter, potatoes, and bread on the table – definitely not the kind of food that is considered super-healthy.

About abundance

The main cookbook of the Soviet Union – “The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food”, published since 1939, was designed to help the housewife. So, using a rich assortment of food products, it was possible to prepare a variety of delicious and tasty dishes. Not only a collection of recipes, but also a guide to the world of rational nutrition, the book was compiled and updated by whole groups of cooks, doctors, engineers, and scientists. The articles and notes on food were written by Stalin Prize winners and candidates of agricultural sciences.

The book about tasty and healthy food reflected the most modern ideas about correct, sufficient nutrition, groups of products and compilation of rations from them with minimum costs for housewives.

However, like any theory, the practice of cooking was quite different. The issue of diversity was rooted in the availability of products in different regions of the country. The capitals were better provided, so the departing provincials tried to bring home as much scarce food as possible. Goods were bought, transported independently from city to city, and the transportation itself became folklore. For example, a riddle: long, green, smells like sausage, but not sausage? Answer: a train.

We still see the legacy of the food culture of the Soviet Union in the eating style of our older generation:

• carbohydrate breakfast (often porridge);
• lunch (always soup and a second meal);
• dinner (repeating in load the second from lunch).

But the diet, though not quite monotonous, is rather limited. Here in the course of fantasy, there were 1001 folk recipes using minced meat: from cutlets to balls and pasta on flotsam. And in the end, the healthy food was masked by nourishing food, so that not so much really healthy food could be satiated.

Anastasia: There is another common myth: you must eat soup. But at the same time, soups were made with oil frying, especially in places of organized meals for schoolchildren and workers. This is not healthy, especially since oil was often replaced with margarine, which is even more harmful. Moreover, potato starch or semolina was added, also to increase the caloric content. In general, we still see these vestiges in canteens or kindergartens. The food system in such institutions should be reviewed, of course.

Anastasia: What was true was that less substances were added to the food, which did not allow it to keep as long as we keep food now. But our grandparents owe their good figure to the healthy body cult that existed in the Soviet Union. This was fostered by a variety of amateur team competitions, family, yard competitions.

When we talk about skin health, chronic diseases found in our conventional grandparents, it is worth remembering that the ecology was different, not only nutrition. This is a conversation not only about Russia, but about the whole world and modern trends. At that time, there was not so much fast food. But soup with butter and roasted vegetables, potatoes and pasta with fatty meat is no better than a marbled beef burger with fresh vegetables and a good bun.

About meals

We can find reflections of food culture everywhere, even in the layout of apartments. The famous small kitchens of Khrushchevki implied that hostesses would not spend much time directly cooking. It was assumed that there they would only heat up ready-made dishes bought in canteens or stores. That said, we can imagine what the diet of an ordinary Soviet citizen might have looked like.

However, even in such a system there was a significant advantage: fixed intervals between meals. Grandmothers did not say in vain that one should work up an appetite and should not spoil it before dinner. Because snacks affect the amount of food eaten in the main meal. They provoke fluctuations in blood glucose (“sugar swings”). You have probably noticed that even a small bite of food can awaken the feeling of hunger. Not only does this lead to overeating, but over time it creates an imbalance in the hormonal system. For example, it contributes to a decrease in the level of ghrelin, the hormone responsible for the feeling of hunger.

Anastasia: Now there is no such culture of canteens, when everything was tied to organized meals at work. And we rarely visit our grandmothers. Therefore, snacks are mostly high-carbohydrate, and this leads to overweight and diseases provoked by an unbalanced diet. Learn from grandmothers it is worthwhile to normalized meals. When you know for sure that you do not need to interrupt snacks.

What healthy habits from the Soviet Union should be adopted?

The book of tasty healthy food was passed on, updating and including all new ideas about rational nutrition. Let’s model a picture if a modern specialist and a specialist from the Soviet Union met, what experience they could share with each other.

Anastasia: The experience that I would like to pass on if I could go back to the USSR: make sure that there are more fresh foods in the diet instead of pasted or fried dishes. Reduce the amount of bakery products, because in the past moms and grandmothers used to make a variety of pies in large quantities. And, of course, observe the water balance.

It would be useful for our contemporaries to necessarily add movement to their lives. Let fashionable diets advise to refuse everything and leave only four products in the diet or do not eat after 18:00. But weight loss and health are only achieved by the difference between calories gained and calories spent. Choose a sport that you enjoy. As an additional motivation during the class you can communicate with friends or, conversely, have a minute to dialog with yourself. The main thing is that sport should be fun.