As one of the "ancestral crones" I have vivid childhood memories of milk bottles on the front step and walking down the street (in New England) to buy a good-sized cooked crab for a nickel--YES, a nickel.

I was fortunate to spend time with my dad's family--a bunch of little old ladies--and my maternal grandmother. They all ate the same way I remember eating at our house as a child. Breakfast on weekends (I never ate one during the week) might be cereal, but was more likely to be bacon, eggs and toast. We were a family that ate fruit freely but desserts only occasionally and snacks almost never. My version of a snack was green apples off a tree or raspberries/blueberries off the bush.

On weekends, the big meal was beef or ham with vegetables. Sometimes that meant a New England boiled dinner which I still make today although mine has extra bones added. We buttered those veggies heavily. Soda was a payday treat rather than a meal-time staple so I usually drank water or Kool-Aid as I didn't like milk. We had white bread around but didn't really eat much of it.

As I look back, we weren't eating SAD but we weren't eating PHD either. Somewhere in the middle. The most positive health factor IMO wasn't diet but activity. Most people were in constant motion then and TV/radio were only for after dinner in the evening. Most jobs involved more moving around before computers and all home chores were more manual. Kids played in packs running around the neighborhood or roamed widely on undeveloped land (I was in the latter situation and my brother and I routinely roamed a 1-to-2 mile circle around our place.

My great grandfather became 96 years old. He had some cows and a plantation mainly with apple trees and some pear trees, all the old species. He had bees and made his own honey. The always was a goat around and of course they had a huge garden. My father helped with bringing a water line to the little farm house in the late 60ies. The area once was famous for cattle breeding, which they even exported to the United States. My great grandmother didn't become that old. I think she gave birth to ten or eleven children.

Nowadays the area has huge bulk tanks at the harbor for the import of grains from the US and also a refinery for producing transfats.

Nice coincidence. I was born in Romania too, and we lived with my grandparents. They had seen both world wars. While we lived in the city, we did have a couple of chickens they kept for eggs. Sadly, I didn't ask about their parent's diets or anything like that.

Mostly, I remember eating meat and potatoes kind of food. Though there were things like bread, noodles, and rice, there were also lot of organ meats such as liver, tripe, tongue, and even brain. I remember playing with sheep's eyes when I was a kid, taking them apart and playing with the lens.

They fried the brains the same way as you might see fried chicken today, that is breaded. Turned out very mushy and I didn't like them. I did live liver, but hated tripe.

We also had a few fruit trees in the yard, I remember apricots and maybe cherries. We had vegetables there too and strawberries. Unlike here, there were no regulations against growing your own food in your back yard.

I was skinny as a kid, until we came to America, where I discovered soda, and had school lunches consisting of things like baloney in white bread sandwiches. I never felt satiated by those sandwiches and when they offered seconds, I wanted more. Never had that problem with the food at home. You can guess the outcome, I went from skinny kid to chubby kid in just four short years.

I researched my family history over ten years ago and interviewed my two surviving grandparents. My ancestors came from Germany and settled in rural Iowa as farmers. I have some of their recipes, too. I gather they mostly ate "real" foods, by raising and butchering their own cows, pigs, and chickens. They made their own wine and beer. They made sauerkraut. They canned vegetables and meat. They ate organ meats, lard, and eggs. They drank fresh milk. But they also made pies, cakes, and other sweets, and probably consumed quite a lot of sugar and flour. This eating pattern probably started to change in the 40's as they started to incorporate more manufactured food into their diets. It was a gradual thing. But eventually, they shipped their livestock to market and bought processed meats at the grocery store. Some of them took up smoking. They all drank alcohol regularly. As part of my family history research, I got their death certificates for the causes of death. Nearly every great-grandparent and great-great-grandparent lived into their 80's and died of things like pneumonia or a broken hip from a fall. Only one died of cancer. My guess is their cardiovascular health was the underlying cause of their deaths, but only at an advanced age and with no statins, bypass procedures, and other modern interventions available. My parents, by contrast, died very early of cardiovascular disease (stroke and congestive heart failure), and my grandparents lived well into their 80's, but only with medications and heart surgeries. I attribute that drop-off in health to the modern diet.

I really don't know about my great-grandparents, but my grandparents' diet on Cape Cod revolved around seafood, full fat dairy and hard liquor. Bone and prostate cancer took my grandpa back in '08, but my granny is still going strong.

Those 7&7's she drinks on a regular basis probably have something to do with it.

My maternal grandparents were raised pre-WW2 in Germany and were both from dirt poor families. My Grandma became the "servant" of a Baroness and grew up living on "bread crusts and gruel", she developed rickets and never could walk well without a cane. Grandpa's life was on a farm, but with 5 sons, there was no land to share, so as the youngest, he was "encouraged" to find his own way. Certainly not all sunshine and rainbows.

Once they got to the US in the heat of WW2, they ended up potato farmers in Idaho, lived in isolation (as recent German immigrants, the locals held them at a distance) and ate the foods they grew and the animals they raised. Certainly a better nutritional life once they got to a point they could have their own farm. They lived into their late 80s, with no major medical interventions/medications, independent with a 2 or 3 week compressed failure that ended in death. I think maybe just staying away from doctors helped with that independence.

An urban existence or industrial job in that era would have likely brought about a poor environment for my Mother, so I should be glad for that!

only difference i noticed was lard always kept on hand in a coffee cup, meat was more prized and special occassion, lotsa homemade bread etc, more game meat, meals were one pot type dishes. candy was a treat. oh, females didnt eat wit the family but after

dense pastry/butter/sugar things water came from a well

brain cancer, ovarian cancer, heart disease and heart attack took their lives.

Mom's side of the family:

Breakfast could be raw milk, fried eggs, smoked sausage made with liver and lean pork meat, hard cheeses or butter eaten with homemade bread.
As for meals: animal fats, meat, LOTS of fish, eggs, offal, even in soups! Lots of green leafy vegetables, cabbage, and starchy veggies. Fruits and nuts would be whatever grew in the backyard. Oranges, apples, chestnuts.

Sweets, puddings, cakes, etc, were reserved for holidays.

My mom said children were forced to take a spoonful of cod liver oil in school. My mom's side of the family was all healthy except my grandmother who had heart problems since she was a young child. She had to be careful not to overwork herself (the children did had to do all the cooking and house cleaning, even!) but she still lived into her 50s and bared 5 healthy children.

My dad's side of the family was terrible, they were better off financially, so they could afford lots of extras like bread and imported foods. They are all faaaaat and are in shitty health.

Good thing my the cook (my mom) was the one who grew up eating healthy food, uh?! :-D

I never had living great-grandparents. My kids had one, their kids have 6 out of a possible 8. These living great grandparents are all in their mid 80's, in variable health. They've all eaten the standard American diet for their entire lives.

From this I would infer that the current diet is healthier than the ancestral one. If there is a difference it's probably more from better medical care and higher activity. The best thing paleo-wise is that they all eat meat, and no doubt more than their ancestors.

only difference i noticed was lard always kept on hand in a coffee cup, meat was more prized and special occassion, lotsa homemade bread etc, more game meat, meals were one pot type dishes. candy was a treat. oh, females didnt eat wit the family but after

dense pastry/butter/sugar things water came from a well

brain cancer, ovarian cancer, heart disease and heart attack took their lives.

My great grandparents ate certain things, and today they are dead. Need I say more?

I'm pretty sure I'm too ethnically diverse to think that what my great-grandparents ate is necessarily good for me or to know which genes I picked up from who, etc.

But the one great-grandmother that I do know a lot about lived to be over 100 and chain-smoked her way there while eating poverty-level Asian food (lots of rice, very little animal anything), and her descendants tend to all be the same way, plus an extra bucket load of cheap vegetable oil, refined carbs, and tons of booze. I can't think of anyone on that side who didn't live to be well into their 90's.

Compare this to, say, the European branch who grew up eating lots and lots of butter, eggs and meat (though they're probably just as boozy as the Asians). They're skinnier, but they don't tend to live as long (though they are also saner, so, if I had to pick, I think I'd take skinny/sane/short-lived over fat/insane/centenarian).

Of course, I think looking at these things is super important, but I always look at my own family with a grain of salt and think of myself as a fresh start, rather than trying to do the math backwards to find my optimal, nutrition-wise.

My grandfather lived into his 80's, even while smoking and drinking and working in coal mines and steel mills for most of his life. His diet, I suspect, was a combination of subsistence farming, chickens and pigs raised in the yard, and store-bought food cooked via "peasant cuisine" -- bone broths, stews, etc. The recipes I got from my mother include pig's feet, roast pork, salads, etc. Flour and sugar were expensive and only had infrequently. I remember attending family gatherings where they roasted a whole pig in the back yard.

My mother became overweight and unhealthy as she got older, with cardiovascular disease, arthritis, and eventually lung cancer, and died in her 60's. I suspect part of the problem was processed foods and the 50's housewife diet -- breads, cakes, pies, sandwiches, canned vegetables, Crisco, etc. From her perspective, these foods were the foods of affluence, for people who didn't have to raise chickens in their yards or grow vegetables or boil their laundry. But she was inadvertently excluding vital nutrients and eating lots of gluten and bad oils. It is perhaps ironic that I seek to eat the diet of her parents.

My grandfather on that side came to the US from a small village in Slovakia, and suffice it to say that they didn't eat Twinkies.