Weekend event: Moms

[beaver67.livejournal.com]

Comments

[roeskva]

I really don't understand why they always talk about food being digestible in old ads! Makes you wonder what kind of food they had back then!

[jocelmeow.livejournal.com]

Cheese was supposed to be constipating (this is a myth I still heard all the time as a cheesemonger in the 90s), so comparing it to milk is probably coded language about that. In general, though, "digestible" is usually about "not lard" - I have a comment about it here (http://vintage-ads.livejournal.com/3001759.html?thread=28562591#t28562591). It was just as much a buzzword as anything you might see in food advertising today, although today we're supposed to have better control over health claims. Check out this Google Books ngram comparing digestible, shortening, and lard (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=digestible%2Cshortening%2Clard&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cdigestible%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cshortening%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Clard%3B%2Cc0).

[roeskva]

Thanks! That's really interesting, and does explain why they keep going on about food being 'digestible'.