Whatever they could find so not to starve.
The idea that people in the past had a diet they could keep to is completely laughable the second you start reading the accounts of the number of famines _in the 19th century_. This gets progressively worse the further back you go.
People today seriously underestimate how common famines were.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famines?useskin=vector
If you filter by country until the 20th century you had a famine roughly every 5 years.
I have been working pretty hard to improve my diet and now mostly eat vegetables and meat. Very little processed food, and we prep our food daily.
The last time I was there for some reason I started looking at what everyone else had in their cart. 90% of people just had straight garbage. A lot of snacks, processed foods, almost no vegetables. I never really paid attention to it.
Maybe it is caused by two parents working and just not having the energy to prep food? Social media and shorts stealing free time? Or poor education?
I outsource mine to someone who does it for a living, it costs more than the majority of people can afford. The idea that you can work a full time job, have time to cook, clean and eat and also have enough money to buy ingredients that aren't sugar by another name is laughable.
My wife and I both work full time and have a toddler. You can cook soup, prep ingredients before hand, use a slow cooker. You can meal prep. You can cook more, so there is left overs, I could go on and on. If there is a will, it is easy to eat mostly home cooked meals.
No. Full stop.
Cooking steak and eating it with fresh veggies is one of the fastest meals you can imagine to prep. It probably feels more expensive to people, but when you actually compare the nutrient and protein profile, the steak+veggies will be a lot closer in price compared to carbohydrate junk food.
> The idea that you can work a full time job, have time to cook, clean and eat and also have enough money to buy ingredients that aren't sugar by another name is laughable.
I do this and also have time to play videogames and spend hours hiking with my dog (also cooking for my dog sometimes). It's hard, but not impossible. But then so are most things worth doing in life.
The only people who think cooking is easy are those who do it poorly and those who can't manage their time.
A lot of people will eat "meal deal" for launch and that "meal" often means a pack of crisps and a soda. The better ones are usually a greasy sandwich or salad and bowl of fruits.
Before getting my first white collar job in the UK, I worked for a few months as a waiter in 5 star hotels and upscale restaurants and I actually had much better food than the average white collar worker since being fed a proper food at job is part of the deal. I got in shape in those 3 months(good food + no sitting at work), only to ruin it once re-joined the laptop class.
The meal deal is a tragedy, the bottom and the top of the pay-grade eats much better at work.
Oh, also being poor or rich helps with the food at home too. Cheap neighbourhoods with lots of immigrants have excellent street markets with good quality vegetables and immigrant shops directly importing good quality Mediterranean stuff like olives and cheese. The more well off neighbourhoods have all that too but its "gourmet" or "speciality", the neighbourhoods in the middle tend to have only Tesco/Sainsbury's/M&S and the vegetables sold here tastes dull and everything is packaged for longevity of the product.
Reduction or even prevention of systemic/chronic inflammation should be the prime goal of any diet and all the rest ((mental) health, weight, ...) will follow automatically. I guess a lot of research is still needed but a mediterranean diet is at least a small step in the right direction.
I would note that nobody is forcing anyone to eat like this. Perhaps the root problem is one of self-control and health awareness. Also see: smoking.
The UK is a food disaster, and is the reason so many people here are overweight and obese (64% of adults) and die early.
The meal deal is the staple of almost any office workers lunch, and easily packs around 1000 calories in the form of a sandwich (400-600), pack of crisps / chocolate bar (300) and drink (up to 200).
Anecdotally, from what I experience in my office, home-made lunches aren't much better. As you stated, it's always washed down with a pack of crisps and soda (or multiple). When people do cook, it falls under the British triumvirate of home cooking:-
- Spag' bol' (pasta, beef mince and sauce) - Stir fry - Pasta bake (pasta with sauce and cheese and things thrown on top)
Where I live, and when I go to the gym, I see Deliveroo, Just Eat, Uber Eats delivering constantly. All high fat, high calorie, salty and oily fast food (eg. McDonalds) or standalone takeaway joints (arguably worse). There's a huge trend in my city (Leeds) for people to eat lunch out, which is not only expensive, but calorie expensive too.
Supermarkets are 80% junk food. Do we really need 100 types of biscuits and cakes? Take a glance at the basket/trolley of the people around you, and there's typically a lot of crap in there.
You also tend to see a lot of fat kids (22% age 4-5, 37% age 10-11) everywhere. High school kids flood the supermarkets after school every day, eating huge packs of crisps and cakes (designed for multiple people and portions), and university students (from what I remember at uni) seem over-reliant on takeaways and ready meals.
I haven't looked it up, but I'd wager the average British energy intake is around 3000 calories, despite most people living completely sedentary lifestyles.
I've always received weird responses to eating fish (unless it's battered and served with chips, in which case it's a national delicacy), and people seem to make out as if it's something fancy, despite the fact we live on an island.
This, coupled with lack of exercise, is a ticking time bomb for our country. Everybody is just slowly killing themselves with various beige-coloured food.
It is just my very biased opinion but Brits' diet seems to be one of the causes of why so many Britons dying sooner than expected [0]. The average Londoner eats rather poorly. So many greasy sandwiches and crisps, even their salads have to be all greased up in ways that would make my grandmother cry. Fish and seafood are seen as a "chic experience". Copious amounts of beer. And then all the snacks, munching on stuff the entire day (it says "healthy" in the package so it's good right?). Are we cows to be ruminating all day long? They're not even good snacks like some nuts or whatever. Massive breakfast, then a mid morning break for "coffee" (it's just milk and sugar), then lunch (sandwiches or salads filled with sauces), then midafternoon snack then several pints of lager after work and a dinner to finish the day. It's a lot of calories, and lot of bad nutrients. No wonder so many people are obese, if you don't have a very active lifestyle it's easy to get really fat.
By no means I'm saying my country is perfect, I see there people moving further and further away from what our ancestors usually ate and it shows on obesity rate is increasing, kids are getting more diabetes diagnosis and so on. But here in the UK it's just too much, a walk through Tesco makes me cringe.
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35128440