Egg Survey

Question for you all, and I'm going to limit this to the 40+ members of the audience (or if your parents really did just ignore the egg/cholesterol scares).  

When you were a kid, say in the 4-12 year old range, did you:
  • Eat eggs regularly for breakfast?
  • If so, how many?
  • Eat eggs for protein at other meals?
  • If so, did you also eat eggs at breakfast?
  • How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid?
Feel free to add other details.  Thanks in advance for participating!

Comments

Wright Mind said…
I ate 3-5 eggs per week, almost exclusively for breakfast, and almost always with some other form of protein (bacon, cheese, sausage).

Another egg question I would like to see answered: what part of the egg do you throw away? The white or the yolk? When I did Weight Watchers, they encouraged us to throw away the yolk and only eat the white. Many in the Paleo world advocate eating the yolk and throwing away the white. Me, I eat the whole egg now, after trying both egg whites (yuck!) and yolks. It's real food, after all.
bentleyj74 said…
We definitely ate eggs. There were almost always hard boiled eggs in the fridge. We ate them scrambled with boiled potatoes for dinner and sometimes as egg sandwiches. There were never any sort of "diet" practices in our household and no foods were excluded. What might be called controversial food was only controlled via frequency and volume not good or bad. For example...we ate eggs but they were our primary animal food contribution along with small amounts of dairy on a weekly regular basis. We didn't eat eggs for breakfast, turkey sandwich for lunch, and meatloaf for dinner. Animal intakes were generally lowish but not with any particular deliberation or idealization.
CarbSane said…
I've never thrown out any part of an egg unless a recipe called for lots of yolks or lots of whites and I had no use for that many of the other. Now I'd probably add them to a smoothie or make a quiche with a bit more or less cream and/or cheese accordingly.
CarbSane said…
So if I understand correctly you ate lots of eggs as the primary animal protein source? How many per week would you estimate ... as a kid?
CarbSane said…
BTW, I suggested this once on a LC forum with regards to one's plan being more fat or protein friendly. If you're a couple, make 5 egg omelets -- one can have 2 yolks and 3 whites while the other has 3 yolks and 2 whites. Or 6 with a 2/4 split.
Very young, like 5 and under, my mom would give me a soft boiled in a cup that I ate with a spoon, and she'd mix a raw egg yolk with grape juice to give me as a snack. (It sounds revolting to me now, but as a kid, I loved it.)

When I was older, I'd get two scrambled or fried eggs with toast and juice or cafe au lait/tea with milk for breakfast on days I didn't have cereal (I liked sugary crap kinds as a kid). I will note I wasn't chubby when I just ate eggs. The sugary crap cereal sprees came along, oh, as I got a bit chubbier. Weekends we might have omelettes. Non egg breakfasts that were cooked (not out of a box or just break with butter) were pancakes or hot corn meal mush--generally weekends/non-work days.

I have eggs for breakfast every day. I like eggs. :D The only time I don't have eggs for bkfst these days is if I get up very late and end up eating lunch or dinner type food for breakfast cause hubby is eating lunch (not bkfst) on a weekend.

I'll add my dad loved fried eggs on rice, so that was sometimes a lunch or dinner item.
Oh, and on Fridays, since we were Catholic, we sometimes had a "salad" made of dried codfish, boiled potatoes, boiled eggs, green beans with olive oil. (A Spanish variation of Nicoise?) This was one of my faves. Nowadays, I just leave out the codfish (can't eat seafood) and do the potato/egg/beans with EVOO.
Oh, just realized those pancakes had eggs, so I guess that wasn't a non-egg breakfast. But, well, ya know what i mean. :)
bentleyj74 said…
I would say it varied by season for sure. For example since we didn't have air conditioning we ate lots of hard boiled eggs in hot weather rather than use the oven/stove. In colder weather it wasn't unusual to have a large amount of some sort of soup that included meat and then we ate/reheated that until it was gone instead. Include that we didn't eat animal proteins every single night to get a more accurate estimate. Scrambled eggs with boiled potatoes cut into them wasn't an uncommon dinner though especially in fall and spring...maybe once or twice a week?

So hopefully that helps clear it up that there was a lot of variability. Some times it might have been as much as 6 or 7 eggs a week...other times none at all...but they definitely were a staple food with no restrictions or alterations.
TWJS said…
We ate eggs regularly back in my childhood (born in '52)
Most days mom would fix soft boiled eggs for us kids and we'd dip in a strip of toast. That was a go-to breakfast for many years; alternated with French toast/pancakes. (Eggs there, too)
Being Catholic we'd also eat eggs most Friday dinners.
It's hard to estimate but I'd guess I ate +/- 8 alone and quite a few more in recipes. Maybe a dozen a week.

**There was a family farm just down the road. Mom would walk us there on Saturday to get eggs, milk and cream. She has fond memories of those trips although I'm guessing age has softened the edges a bit. There were five kids so it must have been a chore at the time.
bentleyj74 said…
Oh, and since we didn't bake much the eggs we ate were pretty much the eggs we ate...not too many sneaky ones :)
Anonymous said…
cereal for breakfast on school days. Eggs in a scramble or fried on the weekend (4 eggs total). Add in the odd egg dish, such as an egg salad sandwich and you probably have 6 or 7 eggs a week for me. We took lunch to school (PB&J, bologna sandwiches).
northernhiro said…
Mostly cereal (Life) and milk for breakfast during the week but we'd have eggs on weekends. I didn't develop a taste for them over easy or scrambled until I was older than 12. Prior to 12, I'd eat them hard boiled, a couple at a time. Only other way I can remember eating them when I was a little kid was when my mom would scramble them up with some shoyu (japanese soy sauce) and cut up vienna sausages.

My mom and dad ate eggs regularly on weekends for breakfast, usually with some spam, baloney or vienna sausages on the side along with rice (they were from Hawaii).
Gianni said…
When you were a kid, say in the 4-12 year old range, did you:
Eat eggs regularly for breakfast? No
Eat eggs for protein at other meals? Yes
If so, did you also eat eggs at breakfast? Not really, at least on week days
How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid?
2-4

Now I eat a lot more eggs. Some weeks the amount might have been only 3, but I'm sure in some was as high as 20.

In the periods where I want to lose, or at least be sure to not gain, so a lot of the time, I scramble 2 whole eggs with 175ml (what's that, 3/4° of a cup?) of egg-whites.
On average each "other day".
Karen said…
I ate about 4-5 eggs a week. Usually breakfast but sometimes breakfast for dinner. Occasionally egg salad sandwichs for lunch
When I was in junior high, my mother gave an outdoor cat that adopted us away to the egg man for a dozen eggs. I share that only because I have very little recollection of eating eggs as a kid, but clearly we had them ;). I suspect they were used more for cooking and baking in our house.

Eat eggs regularly for breakfast? No
Eat eggs for protein at other meals? No
How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid? 0-2
Unknown said…
Rarely eggs, generally only if eating in a restaurant. Used to have toast and cereal for breakfast.

Once in a while a Spanish omelete for dinner.
ProudDaddy said…
Having a big chicken coop on the farm, we ate and sold lots of eggs and often had them for supper with fried potatoes. We didn't always have them for breakfast, but it had nothing to do with health - we'd just tire of them. Mom lived to 99.
Diana said…
Interesting question, because I don't remember what I ate as a kid. I just ate, and not a lot.

But I do remember that we ate eggs for breakfast, sunny-side up, because I remember the phrase, "sunny-side up" and what the eggs looked like, more than what they tasted like, because it really did look like a little sun.

I began to cook early. One day I made a mistake and dropped the egg back onto the griddle on its sunny side. I was taught by my father that this was no mistake, it was an 'over-easy.' And that's what I ate afterwards: eggs over easy. Probably one a day. I was very proud of the fact that I could make an egg "over easy."

We never ate them for dinner. I remember as a kid being very surprised that you "could" eat eggs for dinner, and then I realized that you could anything for any meal.

" a raw egg yolk with grape juice to give me as a snack. (It sounds revolting to me now, but as a kid, I loved it.)"

Ha. I love to hear about how people get trained to love this, and not that.
Larry Eshelman said…
I was born in 1946 and grew up on a small family farm. We raised chickens until I was about 10 or 11, and after that bought eggs from a neighboring farm. I remember eating scrambled eggs (2) regularly for breakfast. I don't remember eating many eggs at other meals, except for deviled eggs at Sunday dinners. I probably ate about a dozen eggs a week.
ejazz1 said…
I've never liked eggs that much, never ate eggs as a child, rarely ate breakfast no matter how much my mother tried to get me eat, because I was never hungry in the morning. I occasionally eat eggs now 2 or 3 times a month, either scrambled or an omelet.
Chris Tunstall said…
We kept both chickens and ducks when I was young and we ate lots of eggs and lots of chickens and ducks. I simply cannot remember how many eggs I ate, but I do recall that they were always around, but not at breakfast. At tea time, though, we often had soft boiled eggs with buttered soldiers or hard boiled eggs with salt to dip them. And I personally got through several pieces of mum's home-baked cakes each day so that must be at least one egg per day right there! So my guess is that I ate 7-10 eggs a week with 3 or 4 of those being in sponge cakes and the rest as the real thing, but not for breakfast.

This is my first post here Evelyn. We've crossed swords on Stephan's blog once or twice. For what it's worth, I've learned a lot from reading here, which I've done quite a bit. I don't agree with all of your conclusions, but on the whole your approach strikes me as inquisitive and measured. I have not enjoyed observing recent events if you know what I mean and I've been meaning to send you my best wishes, which I now do.

As Winston Churchill was fond of saying (and in England it's not in the least bit offensive): "Keep buggering on!"
OnePointFive said…
Age 1-?
Rarely ate whole eggs An early memory of bits of fried bread dipped into my fathers yolks from his cooked Sunday breakfast. (NB rationing of eggs finished when I was a year old in 1953 but I suspect there was a residual influence)
?-12
Remember boiled egg for Saturday tea .0ne per week with 'soldiers'
Eggs were used in fairy cakes/victoria sandwiches for party and Sunday teas.

12-18
Memory loss, didn't really like them don't think I ate many.

18 onwards
Found that they were cheap and learned to like them a bit better. Used a lot during college years and early years of marriage.
By first child egg yolk was suggested as an important weaning food at 6 months because of the iron.
Will Hui said…
I only ate eggs regularly for breakfast over the weekend. Typically 1-2 per meal. But I hated egg yolks as a kid, especially the runny kind. So I didn't always eat the egg yolk unless the eggs were scrambled.

Once in awhile, we use eggs as a condiment for certain Chinese dishes (egg with beef and tomato). But this didn't happen with any regularity. And egg was never the main source of protein for dinner.

So I probably rarely, if ever, exceeded 4-5 eggs/week. And most of that consumption would occur on the weekend.
Sojourner said…
I am over 60 and I grew up in town. My mother fixed breakfast every school day morning and it was always 2 eggs scrambled or over easy as well as bacon and toast with butter and honey. We also had deviled eggs as snacks or as part of a cold cut lunch. So I guess for all my years at home I had a dozen eggs a week. My brother didn't iike breakfast so my mother would crack a raw egg or two into a chocolate drink for him.


Eat eggs regularly for breakfast?
Rarely. I didn't mind them I just found cereal and toast more convenient.

If so, how many?
I had strips of bread strip soldiers dipped in soft boiled eggs probably once every few months.


Eat eggs for protein at other meals? Rarely. They were a bit of a pain to prepare or cook compared to cereal, sandwiches or other snacks. And I never overly enjoyed them that much anyway. Sometimes we had in salads though. We were never not allowed them through fear of cholesterol though. My parents never cared about that stuff, we always had full-cream milk, yogurt, etc.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEXvnSb0An4&feature=plcp
Galina L. said…
In my family we mostly ate sandwiches on work-days for breackfast. Eggs were a week-end breakfast food in different ways, mostly sunny-side-up. Some dishes included chopped hard-boiled eggs (green salad, potato salad,summer soups, sorrel soup,stuffed chopped eggs inside fish patties mixed with sauteed onion) , eggs were used when cauliflower was pan-fried and different fritters made.
so, mostly eggs were eaten regularly only on week-end breakfast;
2 - 5 eggs per person a week is my guess;
eggs could be added as a part of a recipe, no one thought about the amount of protein;
Sue said…
Definitely had eggs with bacon for breakfast but mostly on the weekend. Eggs at other times no. Mum also went through a stage where she tried to fatten my sister and myself up by giving us raw egg in a glass with a spoonful of sugar and got us to drink it down (with lots of gagging).
Tacosaurus 🌮 said…
Eggs for breakfast at minimum 5 or 6 days a week. 1 or 2 each usually fried over easy, sometimes scrambled with either bacon or pork sausage. We usually had oatmeal or cream of wheat one day and pancakes another each week...but it was mostly an eggs for breakfast household.

We occasionally had eggs for dinner with pancakes and sausage, but that was a special occasion not routine.

Sandy Daigler said…
We generally had eggs on Sunday only, for brunch after church. I would eat maybe two. I remember my father frying them in bacon grease and it was a big treat. Other than that, I don't remember eating them very often, except for hard-boiled eggs at Easter and deviled eggs in the summer. When I got older I became a vegetarian for a while and ate them in place of meat, but still not every day. Now, I eat scrambled egg whites for breakfast every single day.
Gabriella Kadar said…
When I was a kid, my grandmother used to fry scrambled eggs in lard. Even till today I can remember the aroma and can't seem to replicate it. We had eggs like this about 3 times per week. Also eggs in real sponge cake once per week. My Google blogger picture is of me at about 15 months of age guarding my whipped cream and sponge cake with a big fork. :)

Ate eggs sunny side up, hardboiled, soft boiled, scrambled, omelete, a type of custard with whipped eggwhites floating on top.

Eggs in meatloaf, both in the mixture and hardboiled ones in the centre, scotch eggs, egg salad sandwiches, casino eggs, eggs in a cauliflower dish that also contained lots of sour cream, Eastern European type egg dishes like Galina also reported. So one meal per week other than breakfast would have had a significant contribution of eggs as protein.

Probably in total, was consuming 6-8 eggs per week.
Craig said…
What did I have for breakfast 50 years ago? I have not a clue.....

But that was before eggs were flagged as a dangerous source of cholesterol, so I don't think my Mother would have had any reason to avoid them. I do remember that Deviled Eggs were served on special occasions, and egg salad sandwiches would make an appearance on occasion.
Galina L. said…
Yes, sour-cream in East European cooking goes with everything - cooked with eggs cauliflower, staffed cabbage, potatoes patties with ground beef inside, soups, vareniki, different fritters, stew meat and veggies.I knew people who ate one cup of sour-cream for a breakfast or for lunch with some bread. Many recipes try to stretch meat and contain also eggs to glue ingredients together. It could be difficult to count the total amount.
Jacquie said…
I was born in 1963, suburban NJ raised. My family typically had eggs for breakfast on weekends. Variously prepared eggs served with buttered toast, usually a strip or two of bacon and occasionally fried potatoes (if my mother had leftover potatoes she wanted to use up). Sometimes, instead, we had french toast or pancakes with butter and maple syrup. When very young, I had one egg; when older, two, same as my parents.

During warm weather months, cold potato, egg and ham salads were probably a weekly occurance for supper, but not served on a day when we had eggs for breakfast. I mainly remember eating egg salad sandwiches after Easter (all those dyed, hardboiled eggs were not to be wasted!) and turkey and egg salad sandwiches after Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Speaking of holidays, around Christmas and New Year's, my mother also made a wonderful ice cream egg nog recipe that included raw egg yolks in its ingredients. Truly delicious.

When anyone was ill, an egg "cooked to order", along with weak tea and lightly buttered toast, was always encouraged as a good, recuperative meal. Or spaghetti, coated with raw egg yolk and butter.

I'd say most weeks I ate four or five eggs, with the occasional week when it might have been as many as eight.

I'm glad you asked the question, Evelyn. I've enjoyed my trip down memory lane.
Grinch said…
In the mid-80s to early-90s, I was in that age range. My mom only let me eat eggs on the weekends because of the cholesterol scare media coverage. So I probably ate 3-5 eggs per week. Then sometime after that my mom read or watched something that indicated eggs were not a harmful source of cholesterol, so I was then able to eat them any time I wanted, but I still only ate them for breakfast for maybe 3 days a week, so 6-10 per week.
Gabriella Kadar said…
Eggs are ubiquitous to Eastern European cooking. Dumplings are made with them. Weiner Schnitzel and any breaded fried food has an egg base on the coating. The delicious salad containing potato, apple, green pea, celeriac, carrot, pickle and egg contains both sour cream and mayonnaise. mmmmmm, comfort food.

Real sour cream (up to 30% fat content)can be found in Toronto, but most of what's available is adulterated. Imagine: low fat sour cream! Atrocious and pointless.

Dawn said…
When you were a kid, say in the 4-12 year old range (for me this was the 1970s and early 80s), did you:

Eat eggs regularly for breakfast? No, but we did on weekends. Weekday breakfast for me was usually a piece of toast with peanut butter, some fresh fruit or applesauce, and a glass of milk. Dad cooked eggs for breakfast on the weekends, or else we made pancakes, both were served with sausage or bacon.

Eat eggs for protein at other meals? Yes. Hard-boiled eggs, Egg salad, sometimes scrambled for supper, etc.

How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid? Probably 7-8, it's really hard to know for sure.

I do remember that my parents bought eggs from a local farm (because we got to feed broken ones to the pigs at the farm next door), as well as milk from a local dairy (which went out of business in the early 80s, I believe). My parents always bought whole milk until they went on a low-fat kick to try to help my dad lose weight (which didn't work). I think they limited eggs at that point, too, but not before.
Dawn said…
Hmmm, forgot to mention that one of my mother's only desserts, and one she made fairly often, was an unbaked chocolate pie that had raw egg in the filling. Rich and tasty, and probably actually pretty good for us. We also used to eat raw cookie dough (more raw than baked, I think!), so obviously people used to worry much less about contaminated eggs than they do now.
CarbSane said…
Thanks for all the input so far! Keep it coming ... I'll blog the informal results and add my own thoughts including why I'm asking.

Learned something new -- folks dip "soldiers" into egg yolk. I was about to ask at the second mention, but then they were described as bread strips which was my guess.
Galina L. said…
My mom also cooked fish covered with a dough that contained 2 eggs, one tsp of mayo, just enough flour to make the mix as thick as sour-cream. The fish is especially juicy then.
Now I eat a diet low in carbohydrates, for that reason sometimes I make a Russian-style potato salad minus potatoes. It contains enough ingredients to keep the taste. Besides the ingredients you mentioned it also contains chopped baloney or chicken meat, cooked carrot, chopped or green onion, fresh cucumber to the addition of pickled one. My potato-less version contains an extra egg.
One of variation of sunny-side-up dish - it is made with slices of salted pork fat, sauteed onions and fried in a pork fat sourdough rye bread. It is also very popular to make fried sunny eggs with tomatoes, onions, bacon and cilantro. It is a week-end meal for me and my husband now.
The sour-cream with highest fat content (30%) is imported to Russia from Finland now. Normal sour-cream is 20% fat ,not pasteurized.
Gabriella Kadar said…
Galina, you are doing your level best to get me to drool over the keyboard. Those austere anti-egg anti-fat acolytes would suffer sudden tunnel vision and keel over dead just with the fear of having your words penetrate their grey matter. Fear stops hearts. LOL!
Margaret said…
Being British, I remember well the soft-boiled egg with "soldiers", which in my experience were always made of bread toasted to a crisp, buttered thickly (so you could see the butter on it, not melted in) and sliced into strips. The perfect egg had a liquid yolk for dipping and a firm white; the creamy yolk blended well with the salty butter and crisp toast. My other favorite meal was fried egg on top of bread fried in dripping from the Sunday roast. I still make bacon and eggs and then fry bread in the bacon grease to serve with it. We regularly had "egg and chips" for dinner - a fried egg with home-made french fries for dipping into the yolk. Probably had 5-6 eggs a week as a child, plus what we used in home baking. Maybe I'm too old (54) but we never heard of the eggs/cholesterol scare at that time. I was always rake-thin until my mid-40s, now I'm "normal" BMI and a bit thicker around the middle!
Tolovana said…
Eat eggs regularly for breakfast? Only on weekends - Weekdays was Cold cereal: Cocoa Puffs or Froot Loops & Raw Milk (no kidding!) or Hot Chocolate and Buttered & Black-Peppered Toast.

If so, how many? 2 (so, at most 4 per week)

Eat eggs for protein at other meals? Yes. Hard boiled and Deviled Eggs as a lunch item. Eggs in Tuna Salad.

If so, did you also eat eggs at breakfast? not usually on the same day.

How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid? At most 6 or 8, not counting what went into cooking cakes, puddings & cookies.
Unknown said…
Awesome comments! I ate eggs, on average, less than once a week at breakfast. I would eat 2 eggs when served when I was older than 6 or 8, only one before that age. I ate oatmeal and cereal in large quantities! We would have eggs as protein maybe once/twice a month with a meal. I'd say I would average 2 eggs per week. Hope this helps! Very curious on your motivation/thoughts that led to the survey...
Galina L. said…
Sorry, Gabriella.
It is amazing to watch the changes in the perception of what is considered to be healthy. When I was growing-up, everybody was afraid of "spoiling" one's stomach with a wrong food or from not eating regularly. It was the main general health concern besides avoiding a flue. High blood pressure, ischemia, strokes were considered to be an unavoidable part of an aging. Spicy, cold , fried, smoked food was believed to cause gastritis which would lead to stomach ulcer which would led to a cancer. No one thought about cardiovascular deceases could be the result of eating regular foods. We knew that fat people were less healthy all over, but they were believed to consume too much of treats mostly sweets instead of eating 3 square meals and an obligatory soup ones a day. So, salted pork fat was a normal everyday food, but smoked bacon or sausage were more sparingly eaten, sour cream was a staple, but mayo was not or mixed with a sour-cream. Dietetic food was a bland one like soups without tomatoes, warm gruels, especially oatmeal and cream of wheat(cold cereals with hard flakes would be frown upon), mashed potatoes, country cheese with sour-cream, eggs, especially soft-boiled, omelets ,boiled or steamed meat, salads with sour-cream or an olive oil, steam fish with white souse. Spices , food with tomatoes, fried food, anything with vinegar or tomato paste, smoked deli meats , canned food was in a dangerous category. Adults didn't give children snacks , especially sweets between meals in order to preserve their appetite, children were encouraged to run around mostly for the same purpose - to improve their appetite. My grandma thought that thin children were a disgrace for their parents, but I don't remember a fat child in my class.
Brian said…
3-4 eggs per week until teenage years then probably one or two more.
Tonus said…
We ate eggs a few times a week, usually at breakfast and occasionally with a meal. At some point my mother decided that having more than two eggs in a day was bad for you, so we never had more than two with any meal. As I got older and would have more than two eggs in any given day, she wouldn't hesitate to remind me that it was bad for me. She's kind of like the anti-Jimmy Moore in that respect. She'd have nagged Jimmy so much during his egg diet that he'd have sworn of eggs AND chicken just to get her to stop.

(Yeah, I'm a tiny bit aggravated by all of the nagging, even all of these years later.)
Tonus said…
That's "sworn off eggs." Or maybe sworn AT.

She really did nag us all to heck.
Lesley Scott said…
my mom was a "career woman" & hated to cook, so we had lots of stuff that came out of boxes that passed for meals (Kraft Mac & Cheese; Pepperidge Farm stuffing & mashed potatoes, etc.) And those casserole things where you open a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup & dump it on top. I was kind of on my own breakfastwise; I grew up in Hong Kong where the food is fresh & delicious and I don't really remember the egg scare as such. But I do recall having a lot of cereal for breakfast, granola especially, the one with Jim Fixx on the box...until he dropped dead of a heart attack I think. And then no more granola in the house.
Rad Warrier said…
When you were a kid, say in the 4-12 year old range, did you:

Eat eggs regularly for breakfast?


Never ate eggs till I became an adult and went to university because eggs, like meat and fish, were not part of our diet.

If so, how many?

NA (not applicable :)

Eat eggs for protein at other meals?

NA

If so, did you also eat eggs at breakfast?

NA

How many eggs per week did you eat as a kid?

Zero.

Well, the occasional cakes we bought from bakeries in my boyhood might have contained eggs, but cake eating was a very, very rare affair then. When I went to the engineering school, I had to stay away from from home in the hostel. Tried eggs then, mostly in the form of highly spiced omelet. No disliking or special liking. Since there were many other tasty things to eat, eggs were very low priority and might have eaten once in a blue moon, say 5 or 6 times a year. Recently (a couple of years ago) tried to revive eating eggs, especially the "omega 3 enriched" ones but wife was very reluctant so the egg eating program has practically been dropped.

I don't remember my parents, or anyone else for that matter, discussing cholesterol in those days. Awareness of cholesterol was dim and we did not seem to bother about it in that distant past :)

Regards,
Rad
Gabriella Kadar said…
Same tradition here. My grandmother was always concerned that children not be too thin, I suppose because in the old days a skinny kid who got sick would die. But the position on snacks was the same: zero snacks. Soup once a day which was the primary source of cooked vegetables. But these days kids are being fed all sorts of garbage just to keep them quiet. When I was a kid we'd go shopping for food and there was no constant shoving of sweet stuff into our faces. The only time we would get anything at all was those fried pork bits at the butcher. Even then it was a BIG DEAL. Dessert was only Sunday lunch and usually sponge cake with whipped cream and strawberries if there were any strawberries.

I've been thinking recently that the year round availability of foods that used to be available only seasonally is probably not really such a great thing. There's nothing 'special' anymore, and most foods that had great flavour because they were fresh from the farm are bland and have been in transit for days or even weeks.

In August, we'd actually have some meals that consisted of nothing more than corn on the cob and watermelon. When plums were ripe, we'd have dumplings or ravioli with plum in them. Fresh green peas, green beans, ripe tomatoes, peaches, apricots, all these things were anticipated and enjoyed. Sometimes I remember stuffing myself with delicious fruit and then for the rest of the year there wouldn't be any. Today the supermarkets carry everything all the time. It's no wonder that people are so faddy about food.
Susanne said…
My mother viewed cooking as a chore so we rarely had cooked breakfast or lunch; my brother and I ate cereal for breakfast, my father instant Quaker Oatmeal, and sammiches or leftovers for lunch. This was the 1970s. If we ate eggs they were hard-boiled, occasionally soft-boiled on a weekend. I did not especially like hard boiled eggs, so maybe 1-2 total a week? My mother probably ate more because she had lunch at home. When we visited my German grandmother we got soft-boiled eggs 2-3 times a week for breakfast, which we adored. I don't ever remember hearing the word cholestorol.

My mom didn't have many health concerns about food and likely not eggs either, although she did not buy junk food or soda it was mostly because she regarded these as being expensive. If we wanted food between meals, an apple or piece of cheese or peanut-butter cracker or hard boiled egg from the fridge would have been offered as a snack, and still are at her house. She did have a general idea that sugar and fat were not good for you, but didn't bother with nutrition labels, and avoided things that were visibly "artificial". So we tended to get cereals that had the appearance of being healthy -- NO cool chocolately or multicolored stuff with marshmallows!! but in retrospect were nutritionally exactly the same (especially because even if we had plain Cheerios we put spoonfuls of sugar on it.)

She has only become concerned about eggs in the last two years because she has slightly elevated cholesterol and blood pressure and her doctor told her she needs to do something about it. And she has a vague idea that eggs have cholesterol and so they are bad, despite my trying to explain to her the difference between dietary and blood cholesterol. Although she continues to eat full-fat cheese, kefir and evaporated milk in her coffee, and 0% Greek yogurt, so that tells you something about her nutritional awareness. At 68 she still doesn't really understand nutritional labels. This summer we had a week-long fruitless argument about her eating canned chicken, which she regards as being safe because one serving has "10% the daily allowance of sodium", which is some rule she heard about somewhere for choosing low-sodium items. So the chicken is a "good choice", even though she always eats the entire can in one meal, which works out to 3 1/2 servings. She still insists that no matter how of it she much she eats it can't be over 10% of her daily sodium, because that's what the label says, and my mathematical explanations to the contrary are bogus, and her high blood pressure reading this morning is my fault for putting too much salt on the grilled vegetables yesterday. Sigh.
Susanne said…
Yes, this was similar in my family. My mother emigrated to the US from Germany as a 21 year old and here married my father, an immigrant from Holland. Although she avoided cooking except for what she regarded as her housewife's duty so we followed the European habit with regard to not having sweets except as a special once a week or visiting-company thing. My grandmother was regarded as a great cook so we had the more elaborate preparations when we were with her -- stuffed cabbage, etc.

For me plums and peaches are still something special for the summer, and my American stepfather did not understand a few years ago when he bought plums at Sam's Club in February -- February!! They were from South America somewhere, rock hard, and tasted like a dishrag -- and neither my mother or I ate them. And at my American cousin's wedding they had a backyard reception with a roast pig, and all the old German ladies went to get a piece of the crispy fatty skin because what a treat! All the Americans were shocked -- so unhealthy! Yet they ate burgers and fries 2x a week at least, and package cookies every day, which the 80-year-old tantes never would think of. Still many differences between American and European food habits I think.


Noirin said…
This comment has been removed by the author.
Noirin said…
Coming from good old Catholic Ireland ( which it is no more thank (nonexistent God!)) we ate a boiled egg for breakfast before going to Mass on Sunday. We often had scrambled eggs for our tea (evening meal) and on Fridays I was allowed to have scrambled eggs rather than fish on Fridays for my dinner. Fish was the only food I was allowed to refuse! We had to eat everything else- no separate meals for each fussy eater then. I do believe this has contributed to obesity in children -being indulged in eating what they want. If mine don't like what's for dinner they can have bread and jam I say. And PS they are all skinny! We often had egg custard for dessert and plenty of small portions of cake and biscuits so I'd say about 6 - 10 eggs a week?
Unknown said…
I'm English and I think I may have had one egg for breakfast up until age 10 by which time my family started to adopt a more continental cereal based breakfast. Not sure if the cholesterol scares played any part in that. We did continue to have eggs at other meals and in cakes and puddings. I would say I possibly had up to 7 eggs a week.
Nowadays I probably have about 10 eggs a week having moved to a lower carb diet over the last 10 years and especially since leaving full time employment and working for myself. I noticed a difference in afternoon energy levels despite being a serious athlete (2 hours a day).
I wrote an article about the health benefits of eggs some while back from my website. It is at: http://www.drdobbin.co.uk/eggs-and-health.
fr said…
My mother loved animal foods, and would typically make me (and my father and sister) a breakfast 2 fried eggs, cooked in an iron skillet with bacon grease left over from cooking bacon, plus some cheese toast and regular milk. I hated this high-fat diet and eventually convinced her to let me eat a breakfast of Count Chocula cereal and brown sugar cinnamon PopTarts. My sister went for the strawberry PopTarts and something similar to Count Chocula but different (sibling rivalry). Both me and my sister were on the lean side as children. My mother was stout.
Anonymous said…
I ate them regularly, probably about 3 per meal. I rarely ate them at other meals. I probably ate 9 eggs per week. Scrambled, fried, omelets, and hardboiled were how I did.

I probably eat the same amount of eggs now. I have nothing against eating more of them but I like to get the best quality eggs and those are rather expensive.

Don! said…
I'm pretty sure I ate eggs when I was a kid, but I have no freaking idea how many eggs per week I ate 35 years ago.
Anonymous said…
I remember eating hard-boiled eggs as a child (43 now), but then I don't remember having them for many years. We were a "low-fat" household after a while (except for bacon, which my mom loved), so anything cooked probably tasted terrible, and I didn't like eggs. Not very helpful, but my mom was so neurotic about food, that most of it was nasty, and I've blocked it out.
Anonymous said…
If you want numbers, I'd say I ate 2-4 eggs/week, mostly baked into box mix cakes and pancakes, and french toast, which I made myself and loved.
Puddleg said…
However many eggs I think I ate 50 years ago, the real number could easily be double or half that.
What's that as a P value?