Sandy:
I will draw your attention to the fact that your anecdote is about your home and growing up.
By sheer coincidence, it was also mine.
But you, unlike me, are failing to look around you both now and back then.
Your mom and my mom would have been considered a bit "too" modern back then -- there was a big push to use vegetable oil for cooking, like I just said, and most people were not doing that.
Maybe for you and me a couple of slices of bacon per week were a treat and bacon or lard were not used often or at all. But for the majority of my neighbors and relatives and, I'm willing to bet, yours too, they were cooking with bacon even if you never saw it on the food.
That's the entire reason I'm objecting to your "treat" and "proper place" etc. Your entire post is talking about a history that did not happen for most people back then. It was your life. Again, by coincidence, it was mine, but I recognize that both of my parents were better educated than my neighbors and relatives and I'm drawing your attention to the fact in the hopes that you will recognize the same.
And, contrary to popular fashion, I'm not doing that to be in your face, or win points or anything like that. I'm trying to get you to recognize that your and my situations were not common, because when one goes around making proclamations like you did, it makes you sound disconnected from reality and history.
The size of current burgers or presence or absence of bacon in them has very little to do with the fact that back then, just like now, there were *plenty* of very high fat foods that were served often, particularly in lower class homes. Even more so before refrigeration was common place.
Both your parents and mine were way ahead of the times. Please just accept that. Not everyone had the money or the time to offer their kids a diet that was lower in fat like you and I did.
And let's not even start talking for other countries. What do we do with the diet filled with pork sausages in some places in Europe, and that's even current?
You and your family had a healthier, more balanced diet than usual. I'm willing to bet that both your mom and mine had Home Ec teachers using the same research and books, and they both took it to heart that that was the best, most scientific way to care for their families.
It does not make it true for everyone else.
Just like it was obvious to me that not every family around my family had a washer, dryer, dishwasher, air conditioner, color TV, vacuum cleaner etc. We were fortunate enough to have them and we thought they were necessities, not luxuries, but many people around us did not share that notion.
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