OTOH, it's not like fat was so abundant before, neither from meat nor dairy.

That's only true if you have the peculiar western idea that meat is just the lean muscle tissue of the animal.

If you count bone marrow, brain, organ meats, blood, etc. an animal is pretty high fat.

the problem is that "animal" was not the most common food anyway, overshadowed by plants, not that it doesn't contain enough fat.

EDIT: I'm also not sure about this western culture bias you're talking about, I am italian and we eat innards, blood and marrow. I am fairly sure every culture in europe does.

Not every culture in Europe, I'm afraid. English people have a pretty strong aversion towards "offal" (innards). I live in the UK (I'm originally from Greece) and it's impossible to find any trachea or lungs, let alone small intestines for some traditional dishes I really miss (g. kokoretsi, gardoumba).

You can find hearts, livers, kidneys and stomachs, but except for chicken livers, pretty much only in halal (i.e. middle easterner) butchers, as far as I can tell.

Edit: Most English also tend to find blood saussages disturbing. There's black pudding, a blood sausage they make oop north, in Yorkshire, but people under the north-south divide won't go near it with a ten-foot pole.

And you should just see the expressions of disgust towards haggis (a Scottish dish made with innards and quaker oats).

Black pudding is a central component of the "full English breakfast" that seems to be readily available all over London. Someone's gotta be eating it, and probably not just tourists like me.

There's a huge class component in eating offal, though. It might be that you're associating mainly with middle class people who find eating offal to be beneath them, or looking for it in middle class areas. Small intestines (chitterlings or "chitlins" in the US) is a good example - I'm a middle class white person in the northeastern US and I've never had them and no one I know has ever admitted eating them to me, but they're popular among poor people of all races in the rural south and among black Americans in northern cities.

I do enjoy kiska, though, along with a number of my friends - a Polish blood sausage flavored with marjoram. A lot of people here have Polish ancestors who came here for work in the steel mills, and it's a very working class sort of food.

Black pudding is part of the full English in Yorkshire, but not more southerly than that, as far as I know. It's not surprising to find it in London- you can find anything edible in London, including a restaurant that specialises in cooking animals whole and letting nothing go to waste. I forget the name, it's one of those trendy expensive ones so I've never been.

Where I live in the South, the full English is french toast, baked beans, hash browns, fried mushrooms, grilled tomatoes, eggs, bacon, sausage and spam (sorry, couldn't resist). I sincerely believe that a majority of English people would not touch their breakfast if it had black pudding in it.

Also, I'd think the middle classes would be more likely to eat offal, just to show they're superior to the plebs. But I might be wrong.

there are a lot variations (hungarians seem to consume a lot of chicken liver which I have _never_ seen in a supermarket in Italy, while beef liver is very common in Italy and seldom sold in Budapest), I just felt the blanket statement towards "the west" was wrong.

> overshadowed by plants

When? Only in the last 10,000 years of agriculture, I guarantee you hunter gatherers did not get the bulk of their calories from plants. Also, it's heavily dependent on what culture you're talking about. Some cultures relied heavily on animals, others on plants.

well, sure, but we were talking before '1970, rather than "before agriculture", and cultures in which the sugar lobby might have affected consumptions, not inuit.

I think he meant American bias when he said “western culture”. “Meat”, where I was raised, definitely didn’t include those (very tasty!) parts of the animal.

Mostly true. Beef liver was pretty common diner-type food though.

And it was the most awful tasting stuff too. It wasn't until later in life that I learned liver could actually taste good if it was prepared right.

I have heard stories from my parents and grandparents that my great-grandparents from Germany would save all types of animal fat (Goose, Pork, Beef etc) and use it for cooking and soap making. It was a precious commodity and was not thrown away. Also I think butter was pretty available. It wasn't until WW2 I think that it became scarce and vegetable oils and margarine came on the scene.