19-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Wednesday, June 17, 1914: Don’t have anything for today.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Grandma was probably still picking strawberries for a neighbor—and was probably too exhausted to write anything in the diary.
Since Grandma didn’t write much, I thought you might enjoy some quotes from an article in the June, 1914 issue of Good Housekeeping about how people living in cold climates should eat fattier foods in the winter than in the summer.
The sugars and starches may be regarded as partly burned, while the extent of the burning in the fats and oils is extremely slight. For this reason the fats and oils are distinctively heat formers, furnishing the maximum degree of heat and energy during the processes of combustion in the various tissues of the body. A kilogram (2.2 lbs.) of sugars or starches will furnish four thousand calories (units) of energy, while a kilogram of fats or oils will furnish nine thousand, three hundred units of energy.
As a consequence fats and oils are consumed in increasingly large quantities as the temperature of the environment falls. Near the equator, where the average temperature is but little below that of the blood itself, there is little loss of heat by radiation from the human body, and hence those elements which particularly produce heat are required in minimum quantity. But as we approach the northern limit of human habitation, there the average temperatures of the year are below the freezing-point of water, the radiation of heat from the body is greatly increased and the requirement of fat in the food is correspondingly greater.
There is reason to believe that, especially during the cold months, it would be a wise dietetic practice if the people of our country would consume a larger quantify of oil and less sugar and starch. In the warm months, when succulent vegetables are fruits are abundant, the fat content of the ration might well be diminished.
Hmm. . . I wonder if the Muffly’s used this philosophy when planning meals. I can remember when I was a child that we ate more meat in the winter; and had lots of strawberry shortcake. . . and black raspberry shortcake. . . and cherry pudding for the main course during the summer months.