6.2: Protein and the Rich Man’s Diet

In ancient Egypt, bread was the currency of labor. Workers on the pyramid of Cheops were paid three loaves of bread a day and some beer. Yet animal husbandry was well known. Even then, there was grain-feeding of cattle and force-feeding of birds to make plump roasts.

But animal foods were for the rich. The diet of the Greek and Roman peasants was mainly grains, sometimes flavored with honey or wine. People who could afford to eat what they wanted disdained the cheap food of the common folk.

When Alexander the Great swept from Macedonia through all of Greece, an account of one of his dinners tells of starting with chicken, duck, goose, ringdove, hare, pigeon, turtledove, partridge, and young goat. There follows a great pig, stuffed with thrush, warbler, duck, eggs in pea puree, oysters, and scallops. Finally came the main dish of skewered boars.

The cereal foods weren’t entirely banned from the tables of the Greek wealthy. But the manner of their use symbolized the aristocrat’s feeling about such nourishment. The breads were baked and served—to be used as napkins, to wipe the grease of the meat from the fingers.

The double standard of meat consumption continued through the centuries. The 1840s in England were known as the “hungry forties.” Depression was rife. Wages, for those lucky enough to have jobs, were historically low. In both Ireland and England, the potato—recognized from the 1600s as one of the world’s richest yielders of calories per farm acre—was the dietary staple. Supplementary calories seem to have been supplied mainly by gin or beer.

It was in this worst of times that a plant disease—the potato blight—decimated the potato fields. This major food source gone, many people died of starvation, and millions emigrated to the United States.

The New Right to Meat

The land in the Old World was held by a privileged few. Even the hunting forests were the private preserves of the nobility. One of the inducements which led emigrants to the New World was the availability of land.

In America, there was a chance to get land, for little or nothing, and this could guarantee that a family would eat. And there was game. Colonists may have endured much, but they could eat meat.¹ In many areas, farms each had a smokehouse for preserving the game. Especially in the South, pigs flourished on the smallest farms, and barrels of salted pork provided the food staple for many households.

It was only a matter of time before cities grew, forests were pushed back, and game was killed too freely. In areas colonized first, the poor once again were driven toward carbohydrate foods— beans in Boston and corn grits in the South, along with molasses and sorghum to fill the belly. The westward expansion began as a push toward food security, toward open land for farms and forests to supply meat.

Weren’t animals raised on the small farms in the first colonies? Yes, but as luxuries. For while grass would feed them in the warm months, the winters required stored animal fodder. It was a luxury to feed grain to a cow and to till land for animal food (see Fig. 6-1).

Not until the 1870s did the great western herds begin to have an impact on the national food supply. Even then it took a lot of money to buy meat in eastern cities. While beef was cheap at the source, it had to travel far. And once it was butchered, it couldn’t be kept fresh for long.

Figure 6-1: Pounds of grain fed to get one pound of meat, poultry or eggs

As late as the Depression of the 1930s, the American poor were used to a high-carbohydrate diet. In those dark years, the poor were even hard-pressed to get their carbohydrates, and much of the middle class joined them in the “bread lines.” “A chicken in every pot” became a political fantasy.

Then World War II came, just as the Depression was lifting. There was money now, but there was also meat rationing. It wasn’t surprising that, with the end of the war, Americans rushed to the butcher shop, hungry for meat, and with a firm belief that meat was needed for protein—and good health.

From about 1950 to the early 1970s, consumption of beef, poultry, and cheese rose dramatically in this country, while demand for beans and grains waned. Encouraged by the popularity of low-carbohydrate, reducing diets (yes, the same diets in different guises that come and go with regularity) and by their suspicions about sugar and starch, Americans viewed meat as the dietary assurance of health. What else was eaten seemed to matter little, as long as meat was on the plate.

Then in the early 1970s, food prices rose dramatically, especially the price of meat. Poorer people felt that they’d been deprived of a right—the right to meat—and complained that their health was threatened by the lack of protein.

It was certainly true that the poorest Americans, those on welfare and at the bottom of the income ladder, had been pushed away from the table of steaks and roasts. But setting aside the social and political questions, what are the nutritional realities of this change? What are the protein needs for health?

In the face of the social protest, some scientists suggested that a limitation on the availability of meat might actually be an advantage. Why was this said? To understand the answer, we must know something more of the science of proteins, of the foods in which they are found, and of the amounts needed for health.