Food hierarchy

[Ava6]

Just when I thought I had learnt it all about the true nature of our males, here comes something that truly makes me lose it:

I had always assumed that the sky high mortality of mothers& babies in times past was due to lack of medicine, sanitation + too many kids for mums to look after them properly. Turns out that an even bigger factor was malnutrition due 2 men & boys hogging the food for themselves, leaving pregnant & breastfeeding women + growing girls 2 feed on their leftovers. Fetuses became too weak on such low nutrition, which would explain the staggering no. of stillbirths. This was probably the reason girls started growing so rapidly after WW II in the developed world: for the 1st time in history there was enough food to feed the females of the family sufficiently after the males took their fill.

For some reason this gutpunches me even more than all the other misogynistic evil men have perpetrated. I mean - can you really socialise someone to be this psychopathically selfish through conditioning alone??? (in terms of the male nature vs nature debate)

This attitude to men needing more food, is still common. I've read plenty of posts from women complaining about their mil dishing out penis portions or being served no red meat at their inlaws house, while the men got steak.

The females were thin and the men had stomachs.

Given what we now know about obesity....

It was definitely a thing in my mother's Irish Catholic family that men/boys got more. There were 5 girls and 4 boys in the family and the boys would just take food whenever they wanted - one boy would sometimes eat a whole loaf of bread on his own. There's no way the girls would have done that. Given that boys would come home from school and do literally nothing while the girls did housework, childcare and cooking, the 'boys need more' argument is frankly bollocks. And of course, living up to the cliche, her father would spend the food money on drink.

Given what we now know about obesity

Given that we're talking about the accepted treatment of females as second class citizens, that's an absolutely pointless comment.

So basically the same principal as some pack animals such as lions and wolves.

I wonder if apes have a similar set up in there groups.......seeing as in evolutionary terms we are not that far from them.

Given that we're talking about the accepted treatment of females as second class citizens, that's an absolutely pointless comment.

A little shit stirry, granted. But could it be a thing like smoking? Dad "got" to smoke.

The things are deadly.

Of course men need more food, they are larger and they have more muscle mass which burns calories faster . 2500 vs 2000 calories for women and that's just the minimum . Now if we're talking about back in grandma's day then when millions of men were doing endless hours in super-physical jobs (without labours' rights and technology of today) then the number would go up to 5k, maybe more.

I grew up in eastern europe and I remember miners having a very low life expectancy (around 50 yo), terrible work conditions and lives in general. And this wasn't back in WW1, this was barely 20 years ago. Smashing coal with a huge pick axe for 10hrs/day... yea I imagine they'd need more calories than a 120 lbs woman. These men literally worked themselves to death so they could feed and house their families, I think they deserved a big breakfast.

So basically the same principal as some pack animals such as lions and wolves.

Yes , basically the same . The lion (or lions, since some packs have 2 males , usually brothers) protects his cubs from other lions, he's the only hope they've got. If he's not well fed and in tip top shape the whole pack is at risk. Same thing with the men who had to provide for the whole family in a time with fuck all welfare state.

cdvegan2023

In New England it’s called the Lumberjack breakfast. DH and I collect our own firewood. It’s given me a taste of how hard those original guys must have worked.

Indeed, Kursk. I also bet the tank boys at Kursk also had a big breakfast, I can only imagine how hard it is to keep loading 100lbs shells in a tiny space in sweltering heat while hoping you'll still be alive the next second.

A man and a woman, doing the same amount of physical activity, the man will require more calories, as cdvegan says, 2500 to 2000.
Just as a heavier man will need more than a lighter man, these are average values of course, and plenty of women will need more than plenty of men based on body mass alone.

I grew up in eastern europe and I remember miners having a very low life expectancy (around 50 yo), terrible work conditions and lives in general. And this wasn't back in WW1, this was barely 20 years ago. Smashing coal with a huge pick axe for 10hrs/day... yea I imagine they'd need more calories than a 120 lbs woman. These men literally worked themselves to death so they could feed and house their families, I think they deserved a big breakfast

Yes, life was hard, yes, men on average need higher amounts of calories, yes, death was close.

Now, tell me, how many women died in childbirth? Literally reproducing themselves to death to produce those families? Have you ever handwashed clothes for a family? Fetched and boiled the water to do that, made the bread, carried the children, produced the milk to feed those children.

Life was hard for everyone. I think the women deserved a good breakfast too - especially since they were the ones that got up to cook the bloody thing.

I know families like that in this day and age. MIL's friend buys a steak for the husband and her and the kids get egg and chips or a bit of mince. Maybe sausages sometimes. They have plenty of money and the wife works but it's just the done thing. The good stuff is for the man of the house.

My local butcher is like this too. I went in and as I had lamb for myself (DH and kids won't eat it) I said, "Ooh can I get three sirloins for hubby and kids please" he was aghast that I would buy steaks for the children (two steaks between DC 11, 8 & 5) He tried to sell me burgers, sausages and anything else but the good meat. He was appalled that I would waste steaks on children and they didn't need anything like that! (My little monsters are big eaters and have always eaten the same as us big folk, just in smaller portions)
Bloody busybody talking shite. If he weren't the only butcher I'd shop elsewhere.

That's right and these are just base numbers. If we're talking about men's jobs before workers' rights and technology, then the number shoots up. And even today there are plenty of jobs that almost no woman does because they can't , anything from oil drilling to military grunts. Not to mention that women are far more likely to sustain injuries because of having more ''delicate'' bodies (bones, tendons, ligaments etc). Same reason we separate sports and why trans athletes in women's sports is ridic.

Logging 140 lbs for 2 days in the desert at 50 degrees.... does he deserve a big breakfast ? I reckon he does.

Oh gad, here come the poor menz brigade. 😒 We're not talking about the calories needed by men, compared to women. We're talking about women suffering and in some cases dying, due to lack of nutrition.

When i was a kid, my best friend had an extended household. The women cooked. The men (her dad and her uncle, then later on her big brother too) were fed first, meat and two veg, with chops or suchlike as the meat. Then when they'd had enough the women (nan, mum, her and her sister) were fed, but with mince instead of chops.

I can remember my dad just cooking once, when my mum was visiting my sick nana. He made a mixed grill - chops, bacon, sausages, kidneys, etc etc - but we kids only got a couple of sausages as we "wouldn't appreciate" the rest of it and he ate the rest. (This was more than 40 years ago and I am still resentful!) He then, very pleased with himself, went on a rant about my mother's (excellent) cooking, and wondered why she didn't cook like he just had, all the time. (He'd just spent a large part of a week's worth of grocery money on meat for just himself for one day.) He then left us to clean up.

Fizzy, I agree that the vast majority of people had shit lives for most of our history, gender only made a difference what kind of flavour the shit was.

And as Clint said before shooting Gene Hackman, ''deserve's got nothing to do with it''. It's just pure logic in a day without welfare and women being able to work for any real money : if the men can't work, the whole family starves. Families still doing this today in the western world is obv a completely different matter, that's sexist and abusive.

Oh, and the men in my friend's family weren't doing backbreaking physical work. One was retired, one drove a cab, one worked in a shop, all lived in a small house in the suburbs, no lumberjacking required. Still got fed first, and with better meat.

Yes Fizzy Wa,

I am wondering, because I saw this on a BBC documentary, in addition to the very real and hard job of say washing clothes by hand, which apparently is tough - the documentary pointed to the fact that there was a great deal of "piece work" that went on.

Wikipedia on this piece work:

In the mid-19th century, the practice of distributing garment assembly among lower-skilled and lower-paid workers came to be known in Britain as the sweating system and arose at about the same time that a practical (foot-powered) sewing machine, was developed. Factories that collected sweating system workers at a single location, working at individual machines, and being paid piece rates became pejoratively known as sweatshops.

It's just pure logic in a day without welfare and women being able to work for any real money : if the men can't work, the whole family starves

It was sexist and abusive back then too. You say yourself - if women can't work for any real money (note they were still working - taking in washing, sewing, growing food, looking after livestock), so they have to sacrifice their food to the man so he can - how is that anything but abusive?

I will also mention, that women produce over 50% of the world's food www.fao.org/docrep/x0262e/x0262e16.htm - so actually, even the logic that they needed the man's labour to eat may be flawed. Although in a lot of history, without that man, they wouldn't be allowed to have the property to live on, so yeah, more sexist, financial abuse.

wasnt this pretty clearly documented in historical sources
eg Round about a pound a week
this is a classic survey of poverty and infant mortality in the London East end from 1913- and strongly details that the mans portion (eg feeding the 'worker' and wage earner by increased portions, better food eg meat, and 'relish' like an extra source of protein with his lunch) was common practice, while women and childrens diets were much more limited due to this

Im utterly impressed that the whole book is available free access here archive.org/details/roundaboutpoundw00reevrich

Fizzy, I was only talking about the instances when the men did need more calories and it made sense for them to eat more because there was no other way for anyone in the family to making a living. People in the West had very little choice in life till not so long ago and this still goes on to this day in most parts of the world. Nobody wants to work in a bolivian mine or collect plastic bottles from a bangladeshi landfill just to survive another day... free education and social mobility are modern ''luxuries''.

Fizzy, I was only talking about the instances when the men did need more calories and it made sense for them to eat more because there was no other way for anyone in the family to making a living

Yes, because women weren't allowed to - however this wasn't just in cities, where women were prevented from doing anything but living in poverty, this is also in the country, where women would have been growing and gathering food, and rearing the livestock - ie. also labouring from dawn till dusk - why would they get the lion's share of the best quality food, when their calorific needs would only be 25% more? How is that logical? How is that not abusive?

Nobody wants to work in a bolivian mine or collect plastic bottles from a bangladeshi landfill just to survive another day... free education and social mobility are modern ''luxuries''

Yes, and those children scouring the landfill for plastic bottles to feed themselves and their families, if their families are prioritising feeding the menfolk - who are working no harder than the women and children, that is also abusive.

Preventing women from working, so that you can justify feeding the men in preference, is a strange form of logic.

To be clear, my grandfather was a draughtsman - he worked all day at a desk, while my grandmother was pregnant for a total of nearly 7 years and washed, cooked and cleaned for a family of 11.

I agree with Fizzy that it's absolutely bonkers to say that men needed more calories because they're the only ones who could make money when it was the men themselves who prevented women from making any fucking money. Women didn't choose to be pregnant for years on end or spend their entire lives washing laundry - they did that because they weren't allowed to do anything else.

It's not a coincidence that as soon as women had the choice to have fewer children and the choice to go out to work that they did so, straight away.