How Much Should I Eat? Hundred Year Old Advice

17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Saturday, August 3, 1912: Let me see, what did I do today? Not very much, anyway. Twas it easy this afternoon.

DSC03255.crop — Mold of Rice Filled with Chopped Meat (Source: The Butterick Cook Book,1911)

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Since Grandma again didn’t write much a hundred years ago today, I’m going to go off on a tangent. It’s kind of amazing, but sometimes I find a hundred year old advice really useful and it sticks in my mind.

Here’s some advice about how much to eat:

Temperate people with good digestion never feel their stomachs, forget that they have stomachs, while big eaters are always hungry or faint, or bloated or troubled with heart burn, derangement of the bowels or some other conditions showing a morbid state of the digestive apparatus.

National Food Magazine ((June, 1912)

I saw this quote a month or so ago—and since then when I’m tempted to overeat, I often think that I’d better stop before I feel my stomach. (And, sometimes I forget the advice and feel my stomach—and only then do I remember that I should have followed the advice in that old magazine.)

Previous posts on eating and obesity:

Dieting a Hundred Years Ago

1911 Weight Loss Tip: Fletcherize Your Food

Are You Obese? 1911 and 2011

Driving Horses

17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Friday, August 2, 1912: Had to does some work today, but I guess anyone would get tired of playing all the time. Was out helping in the field this afternoon.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

I think that I know what Grandma was doing in the fields She was probably leading horses that were pulling a roller over a recently plowed field. It probably was a field from which oats had been harvested in July.

The field would have been plowed, and a roller was smoothing the soil, so that wheat could be planted in September. Back then farmers typically followed a four-year crop rotation: corn, oats, wheat, hay.

How do I know what Grandma was doing?

Farm work varies by season—corn is planted in the spring, wheat and oats are harvested in July, and so on.

Amazingly exactly one-year prior to this diary entry on August 2, 1911 Grandma wrote about driving horse through the dust of a plowed field. That post is repeated below:

Grandma wrote:

Wednesday, August 2, 1911: Took lessons in driving, but even though I would like to learn to drive, I did not like that kind of lesson for the horses were old and slow, and I had to drive them in the field behind choking clouds of dust.

My Comments

I read this entry to my father and asked him what Grandma was doing. He says that she probably was using a roller on a plowed field. The roller would level the plowed earth in preparation for planting winter wheat seeds.

The horses would have been hitched to the roller and Grandma would have needed to tighten one rein or the other to make the horses go in a straight line.

I can almost picture the clouds of dust stirred up by the roller swirling around Grandma as she drove the horses.

A Party at the Creek

17-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Thursday, August 1, 1912:

August will fly fast enough,

And at its eve will again will be

The dear old school days.

So farewell to July.

Half of the Summer has vanished,

And half of it yet to come.

Yet the days glide on as ever,

And August another month begun.

We had our S.S. class up along the creek today. All were there and had a splendid time. Such a time as we had a losing of things, but they were all recovered. I lost the heel off of my shoe and didn’t miss it for awhile afterwards. I feel like a stuffed toad this evening.

Recent photo of the stream that flows through the farm Grandma grew up on. The old Muffly barn is in the background.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

It sounds Grandma and her sister Ruth were the hostesses for the Sunday School party. What fun! . . . good friends. . . good food. . . wading in the creek . . . the perfect summer day (in spite of a broken shoe heel).

Monthly Poem

Grandma began every month in the diary with a poem. Each month I ponder whether she wrote the poem or whether she copied it from some source.

Since she’s mentioned that school will be starting in about a month in several recent posts, this month I’m voting that she wrote the poem herself.