Evolution of the family dinner

Over the next few weeks I am going to be giving my take of a T.V. series I found about the evolution of the family dinner. I have found this series completely fascinating. BBC has been known to do social experimental T.V. shows. This show is called Back in Time for Dinner
you can watch it here:
https://youtu.be/oLtMeBafJAE
This week I be talking about the 1950's.
Now there is a big difference between Britain and American in the 1950's. The British still were being rationed with food, where as American was not. Rationing ended in Britain in 1954.

Victory gardens were still being grown in England.

This website offer's 1950's recipes

http://www.recipelion.com/Editors-Picks/Old-Fashioned-Recipes-from-the-1950s#RThMwc7O56PIvtRW.32

This was a time when we shopped at what we now call "mom and pop" shops. If you needed meat you went to the butchers, if you need can goods you went to a grocers and if you didn't make your own bread you bought it from a bakery. The 1st thing you notice about the kitchen in the show is how bare it was, Everything was low tech. There was no extra money to be spent on treats and 1/3 of families income was spend on food. (which from 1950 to 1954 there was not a lot of)
All of there meals were prepared using the National Food Survey that Britain had. They asked 8000 wives from 1940 to 1999 what they ate weekly. It is the only survey like it.

Wives worked 72 hours a week cleaning and cooking. WOW!


There are 3 meals a day still however it was called breakfast, supper and dinner. The largest meal was supper (what we would call lunch now)

The men would go to work and the wife would stay home and yes, clean and raise the children, This was a time when women were proud of the homes and a big part of that pride was making sure it was always presentable.

I personally remember my grandmother would be in the kitchen all day cooking. She would get up before the sun came up cook a huge breakfast. Once breakfast was done she was all the dishes and start on supper, (and this was in the 1980's) We would always have family dinner's at the table, This was also true with my parents. They are very found memories.

There weren't snacks filled with sugars and even though the family in the program had to make do with their rations they did make sure not to waste what they had.

The thing that made me say YUCK was the dripping on the bread. I understand why they did it but still YUCK!

I felt even though the wife in the series felt like she was trapped in the kitchen the whole week the food was pure and didn't have all the additives we have now. I really think that due to the no additives, even with the drippings and bread, the family ate healthier.
I think we can all learn a lot from the 1950's family when it comes to eating as a family.

Also I have read that people now go on the ration diet and have great success with it.

But how does the family evole from the 1950's to the 1960's? We will have to wait til next week to find out.