A History of American Eating Habits

Food to Fuel an Active Life

George Washington and his soldiers weren't chomping on watermelon. Rather, a soldier's daily ration included about a half pint of beans or peas, a pint of milk, a pound of beef, pork, or salted fish (yes, a pound), and a pound of bread. He also received six ounces of butter.

It amounted to 3,000 to 4,000 calories—more than even many overweight people eat today. It wasn't just soldiers who were eating so much food. Most people ate about that amount, too. Yet obesity wasn't rampant. "Daily life required a terrific calorie intake," says Sandra Oliver, a food historian in Islesboro, Maine.

It was the "pre-leisure era," she notes. People walked a lot, rode horses, and expended a lot of calories—in their everyday jobs and chores.

No Fish Today

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Today, "we think we're being terribly virtuous," Oliver remarks. But the main purpose of eating back then "was [to get] enough calories. For that very reason," she says, while modern people enjoy seafood because it is light, fish "was not preferred in 1776." People generally had fish about once a week. What kind of fish did people eat? Perhaps some cod with salt pork scraps sprinkled on top to "give it a little more caloric punch," Oliver says.

There was also plenty of herring and shad in the mid-Atlantic region. But much more important than herring or any other fish, says Rachel Baum, site supervisor at Claude Moore Colonial Farm in McLean, Virginia, was meat, particularly pork, because pigs were cheap to feed.

They could be fattened for slaughter by giving them apple cores, potato peelings, and spoiled foods that humans or other animals couldn't eat. Wild game was often on the menu, too. Turkeys, pigeons, venison, rabbit, squirrel—Colonial roadkill, if you will.

How the Other Half Eats

Interestingly, even though most farmers were relatively poor, "people had plenty to eat," says Baum. Indeed, Williamsburg's Askew observes that there was so much "virgin land" here that "coming from the mother country," the opportunities to secure food would have seemed quite abundant to our forefathers. As would "the selection of fruits and vegetables," adds Howell.

The produce planted on the ample farmland included many different kinds of beans and squash; root vegetables such as potatoes and turnips; and leafy items like cabbage, collards, broccoli, and cauliflower. The seasons were always an issue, however, which is why food preservation was so important not just for produce but for meat as well.

Cows and pigs were often slaughtered in the fall and then stored and eaten over the next 12 months, Baum reports, and the foods cut from them were often preserved via salting. Pickling meats, along with items like beans, radishes, and cucumbers, allowed them to last, too, as did drying. Consider that while young corn was eaten off the cob in the summer, dried ground corn was used all year to make hoecakes and the like.

Enjoying the Meal

Colonial people lingered over the main meal. Dinner was "your television, your computer, the mall, the video games," Howell says. "In the 18th century, that was all centered around the dining table. Where else are you going to go?" she asks rhetorically. "You can't get up and call someone on the telephone."

Of course, people do tend to linger and keep company on holidays like today, often letting the afternoon barbecue or clambake stretch into the early evening. And along with chowing down on traditional staples such as watermelon, corn, and perhaps some beef, pork or fish, they also enjoy a beer—or two.

In other words, while you're sitting around the back yard this afternoon, chances are strong that you're engaging in some of the very same dining practices of our Colonial forebears on the very first Independence Day. But don't forget to make like a Colonial and expend some calories in a long walk or swim.