I think you are absolutely right, DawnT.  I have exactly the same reaction to paging through my 1950s cookbooks.  The salt!  The fat!  I think Americans today use quite a bit less of both than they did in food back then.  So what’s gotten worse?  The portions!  If you cut the salt and sugar in half but eat four times the quantity, you haven’t cut anything at all.  Have you seen (or do you remember) those teency little cups of Pepsi people sipped in the 50s and 60s?  Imagine the reactions you’d have gotten back then carrying around a Super Big Gulp-sized drink.

Actually, I’m violating one of my cardinal rules on Roadfood.com – I’ve always refused to discuss health issues here.  Not that I think those issues are unimportant.  Rather this is a place to celebrate the joys of food.  People can go elsewhere for the buzzkill.

Did you know that, until WWII, bacon fat was the most commonly used cooking fat in the home in the U.S.?  Does anyone else find that as amazing, in today’s context, as I do?  You know, that means that not only did they use loads of bacon fat, they must have cooked and eaten all that bacon to have all that fat to use!