Compare what they are to what we eat

kepi

First Sergeant
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I’m curious if anyone knows the daily caloric intake for a civilian (North & South) during the Civil War? I realize there is a lot of variation due to the war and available items, but it would be interesting to compare what they ate to what we eat in terms of calories, fat, salt, and sugar.
 
Food historians tell us during the American Civil War the civilians/soldiers of the north generally ate better than the civilians/soldiers of the south. They also tell us the Southern plantation owner's family ate quite differently from its slaves. Members of the Gullah-Geechee community, Ohio factory workers, wealthy Boston merchants, New Orleans Acadians, New Jersey Swedes, Pennsylvania "Dutch," and Maine whaling sailors all preferred/enjoyed/ate different foods. In a nation populated by settlers from many lands there was (as is today) no "typical" breakfast, lunch and dinner menu. At the same time? The Industrial Revolution was making it possible to preserve (cans, bottles) and distribute (railroads) large quantities of food to a greater number of consumers. Indianapolis-based Van Camp's Packing Company supplied canned pork and bean rations to the Union Army.
Most mid-19th century American cookbooks do not contain menus for typical meals. Some contain suggestions for dinner parties and holiday feasts. Here is a sample week's suggested bill of fare for middle class families in Philadelphia, 1853. Be wary of books/Web sites that oversimplify the topic. If you want to identify authentic popular mid-19th century foods you can scan these sites...
CIVILIAN FOOD:
Confederate Receipt Book [1863]
Cookery as it Should Be, Mrs. Goodfellow [Philadelphia:1865]
Bill of Fare, Lincoln's 2nd Inauguration Ball [1865]
Civil war corn bread
Civil War Interactive Cookbook (good for re-enactors; offers selected modernized recipes and cooking notes)
I'm checking as well. I did find a few interesting pages, but nothing that breaks it down.


http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpioneer.html

Civil War food prices
Primary account of early 19th century Northern Virginia middle class foodways
SOLDIER FOOD
Recommended reading:
  • A Taste for War: The Culinary History of the Blue and the Gray, William C. Davis (soldier food and cooking)
  • Civil War Cookbook, William C. Davis (moderinzed recipes & brief history)
  • Civil War Recipes: Receipts from the pages of Godey's Lady's Book, Lily May Spaulding and John Spaulding, editors (authentic recipes, no modern adaptions)
  • Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront, Mary Elizabeth Massey
  • Hardtack & Coffee: The Unwritten Story of Army Life, John D. Billings (primary account of a Union Soldier originally published in 1887); reprinted by University of Nebraska Press [1993]
  • Robert E. Lee Family Cooking and Housekeeping Book, Anne Carter Zimmer
  • Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War, Andrew F. Smith
 
That is an interesting question and I don't recollect seeing anything that directly addressed that. I'll be interested to see if donna comes up with anything.

Off the top of my head I'd guess that they ate a lot less sugar but a lot more fat and salt but that's just a guess. Thanks for posting this.
 
That is an interesting question and I don't recollect seeing anything that directly addressed that. I'll be interested to see if donna comes up with anything.

Off the top of my head I'd guess that they ate a lot less sugar but a lot more fat and salt but that's just a guess. Thanks for posting this.
I am thinking we eat much more sugar than our 19th century ancestors did which may help account for the explosion in obesity and diabetes, especially in the deep South. I do not know if there is a real difference in the refined sugar we eat today companied to the unrefined stuff of 150 years ago. Perhaps someone can shed light on that for me.
 
I am thinking we eat much more sugar than our 19th century ancestors did which may help account for the explosion in obesity and diabetes, especially in the deep South. I do not know if there is a real difference in the refined sugar we eat today companied to the unrefined stuff of 150 years ago. Perhaps someone can shed light on that for me.

Not only sugar. Things that are pretty equivalent, like "refined" grains. Also we eat way many more processed and preserved foods and salty and fatty foods. Add GMO foods that are actually been sold as "healthy alternatives", like soy-based foods, and it gets really complicated. Fun exercise: Look at the labels at any grocery store and try to find soy-free (including soybean oil-free) foods. Make it even funner: just go to the bread aisle and check for soy-free bread, or to the frozen potato product aisle and check for soy-free potatoes...

There is a lot of stuff we eat out of convenience, that they did not have back then, and it is not always healthy... Also, for some reason, the unhealthier the thing is, the cheaper it is. You can have a ham & cheese sandwich for about 5 cents, using cheap white bread and the 99 cent a pack "cheese" slice and the 99 cent a pack "ham" or "bologna" slices. Check those labels...
 
Not only sugar. Things that are pretty equivalent, like "refined" grains. Also we eat way many more processed and preserved foods and salty and fatty foods. Add GMO foods that are actually been sold as "healthy alternatives", like soy-based foods, and it gets really complicated. Fun exercise: Look at the labels at any grocery store and try to find soy-free (including soybean oil-free) foods. Make it even funner: just go to the bread aisle and check for soy-free bread, or to the frozen potato product aisle and check for soy-free potatoes...

There is a lot of stuff we eat out of convenience, that they did not have back then, and it is not always healthy... Also, for some reason, the unhealthier the thing is, the cheaper it is. You can have a ham & cheese sandwich for about 5 cents, using cheap white bread and the 99 cent a pack "cheese" slice and the 99 cent a pack "ham" or "bologna" slices. Check those labels...

Yeah, we are slowly killing ourselves with the overly processed foods we eat today. I recall reading that the average Civil War solider weighed around 135 to 140 pounds and the average American male is over 200 today.

There is definitely a difference in the sweeteners used back then as compared to the stuff today. These two links have some good information.

http://www.dailycal.org/2014/10/24/refined-sugar-vs-unrefined-sugar/

I know the Confederacy used a lot of molasses and cane sugar. I am not sure what the Federal troops sued, but I assume syrup.
 
For the Confederate soldiers, rations were much scarcer than for Union soldiers. At first they seemed varied and sufficient, but in actual fact this never was true. For most part their rations were corn bread and bad beef. They also had a few vegetables, when available, salt and coffee. But as time when on substitutes for coffee became the norm. In 1861 the general commissary recommended that rice and molasses be used as a substitute for meat. By 1863, mule meat was issued as standard ration. There are many reports of men existing for days on handfuls of parched corn or field peas".

Union soldiers faired much better.. The rations were not luxurious but were adequate. John Billings in his "Hardtack and Coffee"reported, on the list of rations there was salt pork, fresh beef. salt beef, ham or bacon, hard breads, soft bread, potatoes, onions, occasionally, flour, beans, split peas, rice, dried apples, dried peaches, desiccated vegetables, coffee, tea, sugar, molasses, vinegar, salt, and pepper."

Thus the Union Army was better served . Most of the time they would have got the sufficient calorie intake. The Confederates would have been hard put to consume enough for the calorie intake needed.

During the times of poor food supplies, for Confederates, many new dishes were created. One such was "cush" or "slosh" which was made by putting small pieces of beef in bacon grease, then pouring water and "stewing it".

Information from Introduction in "Civil War Recipes Receipts from the Pages of Godey's Lady's Book", edited by Lily May Spaulding and John Spaulding.
 
In the South, Civilians had to learn to substitute also. Two items that were scare were coffee and sugar.

For coffee some substitutes were parched and ground acorns, beans, chicory, corn, cottonseed, dandelion roots, groundnuts, okra seeds, peanuts, peas, parched rice, rye, sweet potato, and wheat.

Sugar became especially scare after the Union army occupied southern Louisiana. The main substitute for sugar was sorghum. Other substitutes were honey, maple sugar, boiled sap from butternut or walnut trees, sugar beets and persimmons.

From: "Food and Drink in America a History" by Richard J. Hooker, Indianapolis, 1981.
 
Not only sugar. Things that are pretty equivalent, like "refined" grains. Also we eat way many more processed and preserved foods and salty and fatty foods. Add GMO foods that are actually been sold as "healthy alternatives", like soy-based foods, and it gets really complicated. Fun exercise: Look at the labels at any grocery store and try to find soy-free (including soybean oil-free) foods. Make it even funner: just go to the bread aisle and check for soy-free bread, or to the frozen potato product aisle and check for soy-free potatoes...

There is a lot of stuff we eat out of convenience, that they did not have back then, and it is not always healthy... Also, for some reason, the unhealthier the thing is, the cheaper it is. You can have a ham & cheese sandwich for about 5 cents, using cheap white bread and the 99 cent a pack "cheese" slice and the 99 cent a pack "ham" or "bologna" slices. Check those labels...
Not to mention the nutritional profiles of some foods have changed dramatically due to the way they are produced. Our typical grain-fed beef, battery cage eggs, and farmed fish don't much resemble what would have been available then.

The seasonal nature of foods is also something that has to be considered. The same family ate very differently at different seasons of the year.
 
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