The custom of sit down for a family meal at the end of the Clarence Day is as American as heart and soul and potatoes — or boggy joes and macaroni and cheese . Over the retiring 100 years , our idea of what constitutes a “ traditional ” American dinner has gone through quite the evolution . In the below television , Mode.combreaks up the C ’s most iconic family knockout decennium by decade .
The picture starts with a hearty repast of Franconia potato and roast beef . Flash onward a decade to 1925 , and the home is now covered with a galvanic pile of chicken and veggie heaped atop a bed of rice . Rice was usher in to what would become the United Statesin the 1600s ; as the centuries go on , it became a staple for many .
thing start to get a bit more processed in the post - war geological era . junk e-mail makes its dinner party plate first appearance in the video in 1945 . The canned essence was actually invented in the 1930s , but its popularity boomed asfresh meat became scarceduring World War II . The processed porc is followed by the ubiquitousTV dinnerof the ‘ 50s . The one depict in the telecasting feature rib turkey with gravy , mashed potatoes , and peas . It ’s no conjunction that it looks like a minuscule Thanksgiving feast : The first TV dinner party was actually modeled after the holiday ’s traditional neutering .

The meals ’ passage from square , cooked - from - cacography fare to processed solid food play up a shift in many menage . After World War II , families had admittance to fresh gadgets like refrigerators and microwaves and an teemingness of give the sack , commodious solid food that write out down the sentence they needed to spend preparation . The 1970s - style fondu feast shown in the video also show how women ’s roles were starting to changefrom lady of the house to hostess .
From the 1950s video dinners to the slipshod joes andboxed macaroni and cheeseof the ’ 80 and hard - casing greaser meals of the ’ 90s , it ’s apparent that healthy feeding seldom make priority over convenience . thing began to wrick in the twenty-first century , with meal of sushi and grill salmon with quinoa and kale interpret the two most recent decade portrayed . That ’s definitely an improvement over the fried spam we were eating in the ’ 40s .
A version of this tale originally ran in 2015 ; it has been updated for 2023 .