Yes, they were more likely to be alcoholics. As in, drinking whole salary worth of alcohol and not functioning. As in, your health being affected by it severly. Actual alcoholism.
As with food, 1921 was right after WWI. Food options were limited more by consequences of war and pauvrety, technologically you could eat basically whatever. But, ex soldiers treated the whole "I won't eat fat, sugar and what not, just to be healthy" as unmanly and spoiled.
I can easily drink my whole salary if I only drink 25+ year old single malt :)
Google any of those.
Youth deliquency rates are also not just subject of anecdotes. War generations had ... issues. They were violent way more among other things.
The face value here is ideology: some people realy like to believe that wars and danger makes people better. They don't in reality. They traumatize people, desensitivise them, make them have issues.
War is not the answer for building a resilient society at all, and my apologies if it seemed I was implying that it was.
Did they? It is also only within the last 100 years that we really had any _choice_ at all of what to eat. Before transportation revolutions, food was what was grown or slaughtered locally.
> drove more dangerously
Again, did they? Cars we more dangerous, no question there. But they were also made of steel that had no crumple ability, with terrible suspension and steering that was more akin to a boat than a modern, nimble car.
> drunk more
I don't know on this one. I think binge drinking is more prevalent now, as opposed to good ol' functioning alcoholism of days gone by. I am not sure which is more "dangerous". I think binge is more near-term dangerous while long-term abuse is more long-term dangerous (liver disease etc)