It was common for people to commonly eat offal (hearts, kidneys, livers etc.) in New Zealand until the around 80s because it was more affordable than meat. As a student, I rediscovered the traditional offal recipes and saved a lot of money by eating hearts and livers instead of steaks.
I think that a lot of "traditional" foods are the foods that were saved for special occasions, they were something that specifically needed remembering in cultural memory of the society. Lambs fry (liver) and bacon used to be a very common food in New Zealand, it was standard household fare. However, you'd struggle to find a millennial who's even eaten it, let alone knows how to cook it. It was never something for special occasions.
Few people look back fondly on the foods they ate daily because it was the only stuff available.
Dampfnudel, Käsespätzle, Germknödel, Bread soup, Reiberdatschi, Schuxen, Pancake soup
(All from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bavarian_cuisine)
Also: Obatzda.
I know in Cincinnati (which has a very strong German influence) one of the signature foods is goetta which is a sausage stuffed with steel cut oats. I wonder if some other German dishes that we think of as indicating heavy meat consumption could actually have been ways of stretching out the available meat.
People would often "eat" meat only on Sundays by cooking a chunk in a soup. Then the elder in the family would eat the meat and everybody else would just taste it in the soup.
[The Germani] do not pay much attention to agriculture, and a large portion of their food consists in milk, cheese, and flesh.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_peoples#Collision_wit...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_subsidy
We require less workers per hectare for agriculture and horticulture, it's been going down steadily since the industrial revolution. At the same time, intensive farming techniques have been developed. Chicken used to be a fairly expensive meat until after WWII when the Americans invented factory farming.
Same thing in modern day Germany. My dad told me that until the 1950s, most families in Bavaria could not afford meat, or only had it a few times a year. This must have changed when people became wealthier (and meat cheaper) from the 1960s. Still, it’s astounding that Bavarian food is mainly associated with heavy meat dishes like roast pork or knuckles today. Seems like many vegetarian dishes have been forgotten in recent decades.