A fascinating explanation of why the rich ate better during WWII: they weren&...

Jefferey Cave - 2015-03-19 18:40:49-0400 - Updated: 2015-03-19 18:40:49-0400

A fascinating explanation of why the rich ate better during WWII: they weren't as fussy.

The British palate has only really developed within my lifetime. Before the 1970s, people had a fixed idea of what "real" food was. And it was basically something boiled and green, something boiled but another colour and something burnt that once had been meat.

I've known a lot of "meat and potato" men over the years and invariably they will go hungery before they eat that "weird stuff" like "spagetti and meatballs" or "ostrich alfredo".

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Alan Light - 2015-03-21 06:04:19-0400

Very interesting. I hit the tail end of that older English food culture when I visited in 1983 (I was 12) and found English food almost inedible - though in fairness one place we had a proper, traditional meal and it wasn't bad, though not particularly memorable either, except for the fact that everything was boiled.

I was quite surprised at how much good food was available in London when I visited in 2006 - and by that point the younger locals claimed it was traditional, but at least some of that tradition came from Cornwall (pasties, also the forebears to Australasian and South African meat pies and American pot pies).

Mind you, our American food culture has never been all that great in itself - it has also improved significantly in my lifetime - but traditional English food really was quite bad.