Snacks before Fast-Food, at Uncle Ken's Corner Table

Aloha everyone!

10/21/08 - Earlier this week around the dinner table, the daughter of one of my relatives said to me, "Uncle, aren't you glad that you live now, when we eat healthy foods?" And I agreed, as I dug into my tossed salad. But after I returned home, I thought to myself, "Hey, wait a minute! We didn't necessarily have unhealthful eating habits in the old days, did we?" And that got me to thinking about how much our eating habits have changed, and yet are in many ways, the same.

I mean, fifty years ago, we knew about balanced meals. We studied about eating proteins and carbohydrates, meats and vegetables, dairy foods and breads, and foods with vitamins and minerals in school. I think the foods for a balanced diet were arranged in a segmented wheel, rather than in today's pyramid shape. Even if the proportions were a little different, the effect was the same. For dinner, my mom always made sure we had meat (beef, chicken, seafood or pork) accompanied by a cooked vegetable and rice, and with a vegetable or fruit salad. And as youngsters, we were always given milk to drink at mealtimes. My folks drank hot tea or coffee. In our home, "dessert" was Ochazuke, or Rice with hot tea poured over it, accompanied by Japanese pickled vegetables. My dad would encourage me to eat fish which, to him, was "brain food" to make me smarter; and to eat "roughage" which we know today as fiber, to clean out my system. He had that right.

At breakfast, we had our daily serving of Oatmeal or Cream of Wheat, usually with sliced bananas, and a hard-boiled egg, which I didn't like then, and I still am not fond of today. (My mom never knew that after peeling my egg, I tossed the egg out the window where the stray cats were waiting for their breakfast). If we didn't have bananas, we got a slice of papaya or orange juice, and our glass of milk with Ovaltine, which definitely made the milk taste better. We also got a piece of toast. If time allowed, I got Cinnamon-Sugar Toast. That's more of a breakfast than I even eat today. The only thing I really disliked, was that spoonful of Cod Liver Oil that my mom made me swallow at breakfast. I guess that now, we know that fish oil is good for you, with the Omega-3 fatty acids. All I knew then was that it smelled yucky and made my breath fishy when I went to school!

You would think that with all of that good food, I would have been the picture of health. But the bane of my existence as a child was that I was so thin; underweight by school norms. So I always dreaded the "weigh-in" day at school, when we marched single file, by height, to the elementary school office to get weighed by our teacher. The teachers would always announce our weight out loud, and my weight was always accompanied by a "Tsk, Tsk! You need to put on more weight, Kenneth!" That was followed by a "Note to my parents" which informed them that I was underweight for my height and "needed to eat more." I think that's the reason my mom gave me so much food to eat.

And to top it off, my mom encouraged me to put lots of butter on my bread or toast, and had no objection to my eating the fatty portions of my pork chop or pork roast, or the big chunk of fat in the lau lau. And I liked it. Fat tasted good. And it should have made me gain weight. In addition, in the old days when milk was delivered in bottles, the cream (or fat) rose to the top of the bottle. So the top two inches or so of the milk in the bottle was the cream. My mom carefully poured the cream into a glass for me every morning, until I finally objected because I didn't like to drink cream. Today, you don't have the separation of cream in the milk because all milk is "homogenized". I was also encouraged to eat Ice Cream, Cake and Cookies. With all of that fat and sugar you might think I would have been a butterball. But it was all to no avail. I was destined to be thin throughout my elementary and high school days. My weight gain would come much later in life.

At school they were determined to make us fat by requiring that we eat all of our lunches. No wasting or tossing out what you didn't like. We students had to sit at the lunch table until we finished our lunch, and literally ate everything on our lunch tray. The worst lunch in elementary school was something they called, "Tamale Loaf". I could have sat until the mold grew, but I wouldn't eat that Tamale Loaf. Tamale Loaf made me gag. On the other hand, I loved "Spanish Rice". I can still see the scoops of orange-colored rice with hamburger and tomato and onion bits, and its greasy sheen. For me, it was heaven on earth. Once we went to Intermediate school we had the freedom to eat, unsupervised, in the cafeteria. There, we were free to throw out what we didn't want to eat. No more Tamale Loaf for me!

But what I recall most concerning school lunches were the slices of brown bread with about a quarter inch layer of butter, plus cheese. The Government had to do something with all of their "Surplus Butter and Cheese", and the school lunch program was a good place to unload it. They later also gave Butter and Cheese away to families under LBJ's New Society programs.

After school, we were hungry but rather than heading for the nearest fast food drive through or for the candy shop, we went looking for fruits and berries to eat from the abundance of our backyards or the wild bushes around our neighborhoods. We ate a lot of fruits in those days, all picked straight off of the shrubs or trees (See my thoughts on snacking before the days of fast foods in this section for more on this).

In the old days, almost all of our dinnertime meals were at home, with the family around the dinner table at the same time. It was almost an unspoken requirement that we all ate dinner at home with the family. So mom had a lot more control over what we ate each day. And she made almost everything from scratch, and, therefore had full control over what went into our food. Full breakfasts and home-cooked dinners made our eating habits pretty healthful. Today, I eat "out" much more, and even my meals that are cooked at home use preassembled flavorings and packets of mixes, or food from the local supermarket deli or okazu-ya. Much fewer meals "from scratch" these days. And I am conscious of adding more vegetables and fruit to my diet, and reducing the fat and red meats.

So are we eating healthier today? That's hard to answer. All I know is that our grandparents lived to ripe old ages without having to take a whole lot of pills every day, and were pretty healthy and active till the end. Today, I love the endless variety of restaurants serving ethnic and fusion foods that we never dreamed of in the olden days. And those choices include preparation styles that are very healthful. That food experience enriches our lives no end.

But yet we seem to be afflicted with so many ailments today that we didn't often see in the older generation. So maybe our generation may be just as healthy as the older generation, but are we achieving our health with our foods supplemented by a whole host of pills? The older generation made it thru their lives by just eating good, healthful food. That's something to think about.

And that's my thought from the Corner Table.

Uncle Ken