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nowhereman136 t1_jdt6991 wrote

Pizza was already popular in New York, especially within Italian communities.

However, back then if the restaurant wasn't within about 5 blocks of your home, you would never hear about it. WW2 not only got Americans to experience European culture, they got them to experience each other's culture. Imagine being from Kansas, and only knowing other people from Kansas your entire life. Now you are living and working with guys from New York, Miami, San Francisco, and Texas.

"I served with a guy named Gino in the Pacific, he kept raving about this thing called pizza"

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InterPunct t1_jdt9bnh wrote

> >"I served with a guy named Gino in the Pacific, he kept raving about this thing called pizza"

You're not very far off at all. My dad joined the navy in 1944 at the Brooklyn NY Navy Yard and ended up spending time in occupied Japan. He got a kick from telling the other sailors about all the exotic food from back home like pizza, bagels, Coney Island "frankfurters" (as he called them,) and this crazy food called spaghetti and meatballs.

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JoeFelice t1_jduogfd wrote

And the people who'd never heard of those things, what was their diet like?

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henryclay1844 t1_jdup0f4 wrote

Hunks of meat and potatoes, with a few other spare vegatables. Source: my family of non WW2 vets.

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Nwcray t1_jdv2rfg wrote

Close. Really it was mostly vegetables and starches, with regular meat in there too. Meat was expensive, that’s why the phrase “brings home the bacon” means someone who is financially successful. They can afford to eat meat with their breakfast.

Depending on the place and time, of course. But pre-WWII was the Depression, and money was tight for most folks. Before that, in the plains anyway, was the dustbowl.

Interestingly, pork was the most common meat. Chickens are too valuable because they keep producing eggs. Cows would rarely be slaughtered because they are an enormous investment of time and resources (plus they can make milk). Goats are good, but pigs put on a lot more meat much more quickly. As a result, pork (bacon, ham, sausage) were the regular go-to for most people.

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GreenStrong t1_jdvju8v wrote

The modern broiler chicken was only bred in the late 1940s. Undoubtedly, the breeds that create it mated many times in the past, but the farmers thought it was a useless defective monster. Chickens used to be expected to forage around the barnyard, and cornish cross broiler chickens aren't capable of it. They need to be kept in a highly regulated environment, they're constantly hungry and incredibly lazy. They reach maturity in 60-90 days and die of heart failure around one year.

Traditional chickens have about half the meat of a modern broiler. Roosters don't produce eggs, and they to destroy each other through combat, but testosterone makes the meat tough, so they would only be used for slow cooked stew. The really desirable meat was capon, produced from a castrated male chicken, but the testes are internal and the procedure had a high fatality rate.

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fiendishrabbit t1_jdvu81v wrote

Although a properly made rooster stew is quite tasty (coq au vin being the most famous example).

Though frequently it wasn't a rooster, and instead a hen that had gotten too old for laying eggs.

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p38-lightning t1_jdvj32o wrote

Yes - I grew up in the rural South in the 1960s. Beef, pork, chicken, and garden produce was the standard fare. I never had pizza or any other ethnic food until I went off to college.

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MolassesFast t1_jdu17b7 wrote

War was also a catalyst for the massive postwar music scene, the compilation of tons of folk songs with blues led directly to the creation of rock and roll in the post war era.

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nowhereman136 t1_jdu4c5c wrote

Radio technology used by the military was also used commercially after the war. Stations could broadcast further, reaching wider audiences

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SpookyLilRaven t1_jdum3vl wrote

And yet people still choose to eat jello mayonnaise in the 50s.

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EclecticDreck t1_jdus615 wrote

A thing to remember about the many questionable recipes from this era is that they were built upon novelty. Jello and mayo existed earlier, but by the 50s they'd transitioned form ingredients that would be a difficult and time consuming to make and use to common prepared staples.

Also: the combination is not nearly so disgusting as you might expect.

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ZylonBane t1_jdwmgvk wrote

>A thing to remember about the many questionable recipes from this era is that they were built upon novelty.

Like the Dorito Taco and Crunchwrap of today.

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FrankenWaifu t1_jduwl9m wrote

I remembered in the old WW1 black and white movie, Sergeant York, York lived most of his life in rural America and one of his buddies from the war lived in the city and told him about subways. When York was brought back to the States and celebrated as a war hero, the first thing he wanted to do was to take a train ride in the subway.

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dewayneestes t1_jduyj4k wrote

My wife’s grandmother divorced her grandpa because he wanted to leave Harrington Kansas. She ended up dying there in the late 1990s. Imagine never leaving Harrington Kansas.

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valgrind_error t1_jduve0v wrote

A food already quite common and popular in immigrant communities being profiled as a “new discovery” in the NYT food section? What a quaint and completely foreign concept in 2023.

Next you’re going to tell me that pizza shops opened up in non-Italian neighborhoods serving worse product for a 500% markup.

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PM_ME_BUTTPIMPLES t1_jdw2ni2 wrote

lol idk the downvotes this def is a fair assessment of the NYT food section.

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LipTrev t1_jdve7xp wrote

> Pizza was already popular in New York, especially within Italian communities.

New Haven (Connecticut) dwellers are furious with anyone who does not recognize American Pizza as coming from New Haven originally.

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Zendub t1_jdvilcs wrote

I think you're thinking of hamburgers. New Haven doesn't typically claim to have invented pizza, only perfected it.

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fridayfridayjones t1_jdvd21q wrote

Yep, pizza was my grandma’s favorite food when she was a little girl and she was born in 1927. She was Italian American and grew up in New Jersey. The best part was her mom used to make extra dough and fry up the extra, then they’d eat it hot out of the pan with jam. They called it pizza fritta.

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HarveyTheRedPanda t1_jduw6ay wrote

moral of the story, war = good yesyes

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nowhereman136 t1_jdwsfkr wrote

Morbidly, war has usually spured innovation and exploration. Canned food, bug spray, microwave ovens, airplanes, GPS, and Cheetos were all developed for the military and trickled down to everyday civilian use. Look up DARPA the US agency that developed new tech for the military. The amount of products they've made that we use everyday is ridiculous.

This was kinda the plot to The Eternals, they were tasked with keeping humans safe enough from alien threats to keep advancing as a species by waring with themselves.

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electronp t1_je2ol0v wrote

Canned food was not developed for the military, nor was the airplane, nor was the microwave oven (though the magnetron tube was invented for military radar).

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nowhereman136 t1_je2scg8 wrote

As soon as the Wright brothers proved that motor powered flight was possible they got funding out the wazoo from the military to further develop the technology.

Canned foods were developed by Nicolas Appert in France after the French government offered a cash reward for who can develop a method to store food for the army

The microwave was discovered by accident but the technology was further developed, as you yourself said, by the military.

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electronp t1_je31kal wrote

Ok, thanks.

You are correct about Appert (bottled food). The Wright brothers did not invent the airplane.

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nowhereman136 t1_je32vpb wrote

That's a whole other can of worms. Different people invented different planes all around the same time and its debatable who did what first. But if you can tell me who you believe "invented the airplane", I'll tell you how they got military funding for it

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WindTreeRock t1_jdwqhet wrote

My mother, who attended college around 1941, told me that her Italian/American room mate named Roxy, would get pizza's in the mail from her parents and they would re-heat them on the steam radiators in their dorm room. Lol.

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Ksradrik t1_jduu786 wrote

> WW2 not only got Americans to experience European culture

Wat? But thats literally where most Americans came from.

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bungle123 t1_jduw76h wrote

It got them to experience contemporary European culture, and culture from European countries other than where their ancestors came from.

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LeafsWinBeforeIDie t1_jdwuezl wrote

Don't forget it was mostly poor, weirdos, outcasts, and the weirdly religious that escaped or were rejected by the normalcy of Europe and came to north America so for their ancestors European culture was as foreign as anywhere else.

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