Germans and Calories

 From around 1800 to 1860....Germans on average consumed around 2,100 calories per day.

For a comparison....today (2022), the number is up around 3,500 calories.  

Numbers?  By Human Progress and their site.

So you consider the bulk of German physical labor in the early 1800s....with calorie intake...there just weren't that many chubby people around.

From the 1860s to 1940s, there's a trend line going up....year by year.  By WW I, they were up to around 2,600 calories per day.

By 1940?  They were up to almost 2,800 calories.

Then, the trend 'bulks' up as they emerge out of WW II, and you get into the 1960s....with the calorie intake near 2,960 calories.

The trend since the 1990s?  Up to around 3,300 calories per day, per German.

Why?  I can remember walking around in most German cities in 1978 and 1984.....finding few if any fast-food franchise operations.  Yes, they existed in Hamburg, Frankfurt or Koln, but if you went to Bitburg, or any town of 40,000.....they just weren't around.  After the 1990s....the hype of fast-food took off.

It's like bringing up the addition of beef or pork in the German diet prior to WW I, and most agricultural support folks (the key job of the era).....were having nightly stew or soup, with bread.  Maybe once or twice a week.....they 'feasted-up' and ate a real beef/pork dinner.  The calorie-killer of that era?  A loaf of bread, and a ton of butter to spread over the top of your bread.

A lot of calories?  Well....Germans aren't at the top of the list.....Austrians average around 3,800 calories per day, with Americans quietly in 2nd place with 3,750 calories per day.  (2018 numbers)

A downward trend sooner or later?  Some Germans think that taxation will enter the fast-food market in the future, and high-calorie foods will be put into a premium situation....being unaffordable to most people.  I'm skeptical of the idea but it's hard to see the projection scale continuing.....reaching 4,000 calories a day by 2030.