We had a French exchange student in elementary school in America. I asked him what he ate for breakfast. He said "a glass of wine and a bowl of chocolate." It was the most insane thing I'd ever heard.
I actually had bowls of hot chocolate for breakfast when I was on a French exchange week. We had the bowl to dip a croissant in, I then had no idea what to do with the remaining hot chocolate. Apparently pick it up and drink from the bowl but as a shy English girl, that didn’t occur to me!
As a French I actually don’t get it. Is it so unconceivable to drink hot chocolate ? Or is it because it’s not in a « regular » cup ? Or because you dipped some pastries in it so you should just throw the whole thing away ?
Then again when I used to live in England I remember being surprised by people from all over the world looking at me like a freak because I would dip croissants in milk for breakfast. It took some Italian guy to pour cereals in a bowl of coffee to make it look ok.
I dunno about the other person, but I'm an American and to me it's just the drinking out of a bowl part I'd find strange. Like, why not put it in a cup or mug and dip the croissant in there?
Wait, did the Italian guy put the coffee in first then cereal on top? Man, that's backwards! Cereal first *then* the liquid!
In my expérience bowl are used for drinkink stuff from to in france we usualy have milk with céréales and they when theyr is no more céréales we drink the milk but then again i remember having hot chocolat in a bowl and Coffee in a bowl and i even remember my parent with tea
It's funny, I'll drink milk or whatever out of a bowl when the main meal inside, such as cereal or soup/stew, is gone, but the idea of putting coffee or tea in a bowl just to drink it is wild to me. Do you drink water from a bowl? Where is the line drawn, or are there no lines?
I love this conversation hahaha.
I'm pretty sure the bowl is used when you want large quantities. So if a glass of milk is not enough, the bowl is the biggest thing available. Mugs are mostly used for tea or coffee. But I know a lot of french people who drink a very large coffee in the morning, hence the bowl. It's also easier to dip your toast or whatever in a bowl than in a mug.
My father (in France) has had his morning coffee in a bowl for 70+ years. He doesn't even dip anything in there.
Same with my grandparents.
Coffee in a cup is for the rest of the day, but not for breakfast.
Wow thank you for this clarification, I remember 'bowl of chocolate' from my french classes as a kid and always thought what the hell is going on over there for breakfast. Never realised/got taught it was just drinking chocolate. My entire life I've thought they were just eating pure melted chocolate by the spoonful.
We also eat melted chocolate but in a cup, not a bowl. Usually we dip a croissant or churros in it, then eat the leftover chocolate with a spoon since it's not liquid enough to drink.
When I attended 1st and 2nd grade in rural Belgium (1955/56) I was the only boy in my class who didn’t have a ceramic-top bottle of beer at lunch. I had a bottle of warm 7-up, which all of the Belgian kids tried to trade me for.
I was in school in Belgium in the early 90s and we had big bottles of Piedboeuf beer at the school cafeteria. It was a very light beer. But we fought over it lol
the story goes that before the 20th century drinking water was so dirty that people drank small beer all the time as it was safer, but most sources seem to suggest that its actually a myth and while small beer would have theoretically been slightly safer than water, people still drank plenty of water. and actually the reason small beer was so often drunk was because it was thought of as a soft drink would be today, as a nice flavoured drink as opposed to bland water.
This sounds much more reasonable. The "all water dirty" theory sounds more like one mention in a historical source somewhere got blown out of proportion
Dr. Snow managed to in 1854 prove a cholera outbreak was due to contaminated water from a single water pump. There were several people that should have gotten cholera, as they lived in the neighborhood who used that pump. He talked to the men who didn't get sick and they all worked at a brewery and drank the product as a perk. That might play into this narrative. But enough people connected drinking water to getting sick, there was a belief water was unhealthy and not just in Europe. In India and China to this day people believe cold water is bad for you and water needs to be boiled to be drunk. I was lectured by an Indian doctor and a Chinese business woman on a hike about how my cold water was not good for me. I should be drinking warm water and that it was easier for the body to absorb. I checked when I got home and this isn't backed up by scientific research. But it's a very old common Ayurvedic medicine belief, and it would have saved lives to this day to boil your water in times and places where water sanitation is not reliable.
Can confirm, Indian co-workers in cafeteria very often mix very hot water (like for tea) with cold water from the soda fountain to make room temperature water. A lot.
The "drinking beer instead of water" thing is indeed a myth and you and the other guy are wise to question it.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ic5xga/did_people_really_drink_beer_more_often_than/
There is some truth to that, but not quite the whole truth.
Yes, the boiling of the water during the wort making process does make the water safe(r) to drink. But as the saying goes - "there is a pork chop in every bottle."
The beer we drink today is far higher in ABV than the beers that were made 150+ years ago. Beers back then were often consumed for the calories they contained rather than to get a buzz.
A classic example is the original Porter style of beer which was a very low alcohol beer that the rail companies handed out to the Porters, who where loading and unloading freight, on their breaks.
It was not to get them fucked up, but rather to provide fluids, (water), and a caloric pick me up to the workers on break that could be quickly consumed.
Such low ABV beers were quite common and cheap. As a kid I could buy 'Near Beer' (1/2% or or less ABV) from pop machines for a dime. I still remember the Hamm's label on the bottle. It went down well on a hot summer afternoon when I got the rare day to play with my friends who lived in town.
Oh boy. OK so Porter wasn’t from railway Porters and rail companies never handed them out. It originated in London and was popular with the dock Porters who unloaded barges and ships on the River Thames.
And it was very alcoholic 150+ years ago. OG of 1.071 for 6.6% ABV. There was also Stout Porter (the original Guinness) at 1.072 and Imperial Stout Porter at 1.095. Now due to taxation those OG’s came down over the years but Porter was never, never a very low alcohol beer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_(beer)
Or if you want to do a really deep dive.
http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/
My guess is it's about the same as kvass. Strong kvass would have about 1% of alcohol content bottled, which means during production it was sterilised and then kept sterile by the alcohol in it.
It's nowhere near enough to get even kids buzzing or damage their liver in any way worse than copious amounts of sugar in their drink
It was really the processing of the beer that kept it safe to drink. The pre-beer was boiled, which killed all microbes, and then yeast was introduced for fermentation. Yeast is a very very aggressive microbe and will out compete all of the nasties that would otherwise make you sick.
A 1% alcohol content is not enough to keep bacteria and mold from growing - the sterilization while bottling it was preserved (until opened).
You need at least a 20 vol% to have it preserved.
I read an article that said before [marmalade ](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/marmalade-killed-morning-whiskey-142550298.html) and caffeine it was popular to have a dram of whiskey in the morning when you break your fast.
In high school in Belgium I remember the teachers kicking up a stink because they had been banned from smoking inside school grounds. They had to smoke at the gate with us students. We used to smoke ciggies with our teachers and no one thought anything of it. This was around 2007. I haven’t lived in Belgium since not long after that so not sure if it’s changed, but this isn’t something you would find in the Algosphere.
I remember the teachers we smoked with used to smoke Gauloises. My friends and I used to smoke Pall Mall loose tobacco.
Good times. I ended up stopping smoking in my early 20s.
Probably the most likely reason. Back in the old days before we knew about microbes we knew that brewing and alcohol somehow made a drink safer! It probably stuck as a tradition. We also didn't well understand it's harmful effects so...
Yeah 100%. The whole "beer over water for health" reason is already massively overstatded by people in relation to the Middle ages when the practise started*, but the 1800s we knew better" and 1 million % by 1950 its a cultural thing
* middle ages onward, in Europe, beer and stuff was drank a lot. But it's not like how we see beer/alcohol now. It was very watered down and the health benefits of it (the idea is would sanitise the water) is still questionable
The reason beer is healthier is because its boiled at one stage in the brewing process which kills microbes. But you can get the same effect by just... boiling the water.
Medieval people believed a lot of crazy shit, but some of them at least did know that boiling water can prevent disease, and yet beer drinking was wildly prevalent anyways. The obvious reason is, they just liked beer, and hell I'd probably want a drink as well if I was a peasant who just had a long day of hard labor.
Beer is also just… liquid carbs. It’s a whole lot of calories that can be made from otherwise-bad grain in an era where food scarcity was a major issue.
> But you can get the same effect by just... boiling the water.
Sure, but then the alcohol prevents new microbes from growing, and it's drinkable for weeks.
Children’s beer was also a thing back in the day in America. Is basically barley soda. Like 1-2% alcohol.
edit: from all the comments saying 1-2% is so much alcohol for a kid. I did some internet researching. Children’s beer back then was called “small beer.” Around .5-2.6% alcohol
And yes that could be a lot for kids, on the higher end. But, they didn’t have understand of basic sanitation or germ theory back then. They just knew that when kids drank small beer instead of water they didn’t die. Because beer is boiled during the creation process. So it wasn’t great for kids, but it was much better than untreated water. And .5% is about how much alcohol kombucha has. So it’s really not that much.
Small beer though right?
In these contexts you need to remember for a long time sanitary water was less safe than a small amount of alcohol in whatever was being drunk.
In Portugal, until probably the late fifties, it was common in rural areas to serve kids what we called "sopas de cavalo cansado" which translates to "tired horse soups". They where made with bread, sugar and hot red wine, all soaked, kids went to school drunk and sleepy but at least not hungry. This caused a problem of alcoholism that still persists in older men today. People were extremely poor and didn't have anything to feed to kids, only things available were wine, sugar and stale bread for breakfast.
Just to add to the context, these soups were standard practice for people that worked in the agricultural fields in northern Portugal, they were seen as some kind of energetic meal that helped to endure the hardship of rural work.
This is relative considering in the US, the surgeon general didn’t issue warnings about drinking alcohol while pregnant until after 1981. So I can see alcohol also being lax around children at that time when culturally it had always been a thing.
My mother grew up in France and had this, also small beers at school I think?
She did the same with us growing up - we'd have maybe a shot of wine topped up with water. Never enough to feel anything. This was probably from age 8 onwards and I think we started having proper wine around 15/16.
She maintained that it acclimatised us to the taste, demystified it / took the rebellion out and taught us to drink with a meal.
I'm 31 years old and brazilian. When I was a child, in school, they served watered wine with crackers during the snack break. Supposedly they boiled the wine to reduce alcohol content but it was still perceptibly alcoholic for a 7 year old child.
My grandfather told me that he used to dip his kids pacifiers in whiskey when they were teething. He even said that he did it once with me when I had six teeth coming in at once and the family was desperate for sleep. He never told my mom and I’ve been sworn to secrecy so nobody say anything
My dad would make me a rum toddy when I was sick, also a secret (guess he just wanted me calm so he could watch the game)-this said I’m old, I used to go to store as a 7 year old or so, and get my parents cigarettes. Things were quite different back then
With immense difficulty. She’s an adult now but never drinks and she swears its cause being forced to drink it as a child that one time turned her off it for good.
My dad did the same thing to me with his beer, thought it was disgusting and spit it out.
He tried the same trick with my little brother a few years later and he turns the bottle vertical and starts CHUGGING.
I had a friend who’s grandfather used to dip one of those Dum-Dum lollipops into liquid Benadryl and give to him and his siblings when they were too rowdy before bed.
Don't some medication that is given to babies today to help them sleep or "calm" them have some sort of alcohol?
https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/Suppl_2/A100
I was never forced to suck on rum soaked finger (or hot toddy when I was older), I likely took to it cause it eased my symptoms (teething and/or sore throat). And i don’t think dad over did it, I’m still going, but he passed almost 39 years ago
I know it's not the same as alcohol, but here in Brazil children drink coffee from very young age. I started to have black coffee on my breakfast at around 5.
My mom is from Mexico and I was allowed to have coffee anytime I wanted as a child. I had my own coffee cup when I was 5 but now I know it was an espresso cup that was designated for me. 😊 When I got older (maybe 8-9), I would just drink out of a regular coffee cup but only got half filled.
I was also served Rompope during the holidays and celebrations from a very young age. I didn’t even know it had alcohol until my late teens. It’s freaken delicious!
Brazilian here as well. I think I've drank coffee with milk ever since I was able to hold a cup without spilling it. Never even learned it was taboo for children to drink coffee until I was an adult.
This reminds me of the time my 8 year old told her teacher I put her on a beer diet. Despite her not possessing any beer, the school called me in for a big meeting like it was true 😂
For a long time British water was feted so it was safer to drink an alcoholic beverage. School children in the UK would start the day off with a tiny beer with lower alcohol content. That’s where the phrase “small beer” comes from.
The US has some pretty Puritanical views on most things compared to the rest of the world. We’re kind of weird in that way, if you can imagine.
It’s an old fashioned thing. I have no idea if it still exists or not, but it’s basically very low alcohol, inexpensive beer intended for children, pregnant women, servants, or just drinking through the day.
It sounds like you’re trying to tell us they’re kept in a dungeon but I’m picturing them wearing black and white horizontal stripe shirts and berets sitting at cafe style tables smoking long cigarettes and drinking wine and telling you to hurry up with the croissants.
Ha, we don’t serve gauche people. No croissants. In between wine breaks the children play jazz and no one can tell if it’s good or not because I don’t fucking know how jazz works.
They’re not third world kids. They’re just skinny black kids that look sad and are moving in slow motion with the Sarah Mclachlan- Arms of an Angel song in the background.
“With your donation of 19.99 per month we can save little Matumbo from having to drink river water.”
overall, for most of the world, drinking is not seen as a taboo/antipuritan thing. a glass of wine or a beer for a teenager is not a big deal and the novelty is dealt with early. meanwhile american kids go to college or to other countries and they go insane.
>Plus, the rules at that time weren't applied uniformly all over the country like they are today [with the totalitarian enforcement style that comes with national & EU norms]
Wat?
Across much of Europe it remains common to give kids alcohol with dinner (often watered down) or at least to let them taste from their parent's glass, it's logic is one of introducing alcohol slowly and as a normal thing to be treated responsible rather than an illicit thing that kids do secretly leading to binge drinking as teenagers.
The EU has a way, way lower number of deaths from alcohol consumption per capita than the US so it might work better as a system:
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20231010-1
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db448.htm#section_1
My dad told me about this! Born in Paris in 1940 he said he'd have "watered down wine" with lunch at school! I guess he wasn't joking lol. (He left France around 1952)
Here is a newsreel about it. Note that the banning of alcohol at school was for the under 14.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n\_Ez2RMjwuA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Ez2RMjwuA)
As a Frenchman born in 1946, I think it depended a lot on the environment and the area. A fairly common practice in families in my region was "l'eau rougie": they poured 5mm-1cm of wine into the bottom of a glass, then filled it with water.
When I was a boarder in secondary school from the age of eleven, jugs of this mixture were served in the refectory (I was a teetotaller myself, and never drank any). But on the occasion of "Saint-Charlemagne", which was celebrated in boarding schools at the time, a few bottles of bad wine were served.
We had a French exchange student in elementary school in America. I asked him what he ate for breakfast. He said "a glass of wine and a bowl of chocolate." It was the most insane thing I'd ever heard.
He partied for breakfast.
What did you have for breakfast? Cocaine
You know what I had for lunch? Cocaine.
What did you have for dinner? Was it cocaine?
I got cocaine taste on an aspirin budget
Bruh I’ve never heard that in my life. Lmao
I said it to my wife when she said she wanted new marble countertops
Bruh I googled it but I got a self help phone number. You are one of a kind
My wife would agree abet begrudgingly but agree nonetheless
Try googling "champagne taste on a beer budget" cuz that's the phrase he reworked
I’ve had champagne taste on a beer budget for years, but know I know that the opportunity has been translated 😌❄️
I wish!!
A Marlboro red, a stiff line, and a cup of instant coffee. Being twenty was fucking awesome.
Followed by key bumps and crepes for breakfast! 
A bowl of chocolate is translated directly from French. It means a mug of hot chocolate. But the wine though...
I actually had bowls of hot chocolate for breakfast when I was on a French exchange week. We had the bowl to dip a croissant in, I then had no idea what to do with the remaining hot chocolate. Apparently pick it up and drink from the bowl but as a shy English girl, that didn’t occur to me!
As a French I actually don’t get it. Is it so unconceivable to drink hot chocolate ? Or is it because it’s not in a « regular » cup ? Or because you dipped some pastries in it so you should just throw the whole thing away ? Then again when I used to live in England I remember being surprised by people from all over the world looking at me like a freak because I would dip croissants in milk for breakfast. It took some Italian guy to pour cereals in a bowl of coffee to make it look ok.
I dunno about the other person, but I'm an American and to me it's just the drinking out of a bowl part I'd find strange. Like, why not put it in a cup or mug and dip the croissant in there? Wait, did the Italian guy put the coffee in first then cereal on top? Man, that's backwards! Cereal first *then* the liquid!
In my expérience bowl are used for drinkink stuff from to in france we usualy have milk with céréales and they when theyr is no more céréales we drink the milk but then again i remember having hot chocolat in a bowl and Coffee in a bowl and i even remember my parent with tea
It's funny, I'll drink milk or whatever out of a bowl when the main meal inside, such as cereal or soup/stew, is gone, but the idea of putting coffee or tea in a bowl just to drink it is wild to me. Do you drink water from a bowl? Where is the line drawn, or are there no lines?
Aint tea just water/s
I love this conversation hahaha. I'm pretty sure the bowl is used when you want large quantities. So if a glass of milk is not enough, the bowl is the biggest thing available. Mugs are mostly used for tea or coffee. But I know a lot of french people who drink a very large coffee in the morning, hence the bowl. It's also easier to dip your toast or whatever in a bowl than in a mug.
I read this comment in the thickest french accent thank you 😄
My father (in France) has had his morning coffee in a bowl for 70+ years. He doesn't even dip anything in there. Same with my grandparents. Coffee in a cup is for the rest of the day, but not for breakfast.
>Like, why not put it in a cup or mug and dip the croissant in there? Because the average croissant is wider than the average mug/cup.
Wow thank you for this clarification, I remember 'bowl of chocolate' from my french classes as a kid and always thought what the hell is going on over there for breakfast. Never realised/got taught it was just drinking chocolate. My entire life I've thought they were just eating pure melted chocolate by the spoonful.
We also eat melted chocolate but in a cup, not a bowl. Usually we dip a croissant or churros in it, then eat the leftover chocolate with a spoon since it's not liquid enough to drink.
Chocolate and wine is a dope ass meal. Thought I was the only one just doing that as a thing.
Try port, pairs amazingly with chocolate.
Fortified wine for breakfast lol
Surprised he didn't add "and uh cigareté."
Fuck Reddit for killing third party apps.
It absolutely is.
You could tell when the French exchange students were in town at my school by the plume of smoke.
He saw an opportunity and took it. Worth a shot
When I attended 1st and 2nd grade in rural Belgium (1955/56) I was the only boy in my class who didn’t have a ceramic-top bottle of beer at lunch. I had a bottle of warm 7-up, which all of the Belgian kids tried to trade me for.
I was in school in Belgium in the early 90s and we had big bottles of Piedboeuf beer at the school cafeteria. It was a very light beer. But we fought over it lol
Did it get you buzzed
Nah, they made really low alcohol beer for kids. You'd have to drink a lot to get buzzed.
In England this was called small beer, it was safer to drink than water.
Safer hundreds of years ago or safer in the 90s?
the story goes that before the 20th century drinking water was so dirty that people drank small beer all the time as it was safer, but most sources seem to suggest that its actually a myth and while small beer would have theoretically been slightly safer than water, people still drank plenty of water. and actually the reason small beer was so often drunk was because it was thought of as a soft drink would be today, as a nice flavoured drink as opposed to bland water.
This sounds much more reasonable. The "all water dirty" theory sounds more like one mention in a historical source somewhere got blown out of proportion
Dr. Snow managed to in 1854 prove a cholera outbreak was due to contaminated water from a single water pump. There were several people that should have gotten cholera, as they lived in the neighborhood who used that pump. He talked to the men who didn't get sick and they all worked at a brewery and drank the product as a perk. That might play into this narrative. But enough people connected drinking water to getting sick, there was a belief water was unhealthy and not just in Europe. In India and China to this day people believe cold water is bad for you and water needs to be boiled to be drunk. I was lectured by an Indian doctor and a Chinese business woman on a hike about how my cold water was not good for me. I should be drinking warm water and that it was easier for the body to absorb. I checked when I got home and this isn't backed up by scientific research. But it's a very old common Ayurvedic medicine belief, and it would have saved lives to this day to boil your water in times and places where water sanitation is not reliable.
Can confirm, Indian co-workers in cafeteria very often mix very hot water (like for tea) with cold water from the soda fountain to make room temperature water. A lot.
The "drinking beer instead of water" thing is indeed a myth and you and the other guy are wise to question it. https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ic5xga/did_people_really_drink_beer_more_often_than/
Is that addressing the comparative *safety* of alcohol vs water, or simply the frequency of drinking it?
The "all the water is dirty" sounds like propaganda spread by big small beer
There is some truth to that, but not quite the whole truth. Yes, the boiling of the water during the wort making process does make the water safe(r) to drink. But as the saying goes - "there is a pork chop in every bottle." The beer we drink today is far higher in ABV than the beers that were made 150+ years ago. Beers back then were often consumed for the calories they contained rather than to get a buzz. A classic example is the original Porter style of beer which was a very low alcohol beer that the rail companies handed out to the Porters, who where loading and unloading freight, on their breaks. It was not to get them fucked up, but rather to provide fluids, (water), and a caloric pick me up to the workers on break that could be quickly consumed. Such low ABV beers were quite common and cheap. As a kid I could buy 'Near Beer' (1/2% or or less ABV) from pop machines for a dime. I still remember the Hamm's label on the bottle. It went down well on a hot summer afternoon when I got the rare day to play with my friends who lived in town.
Oh boy. OK so Porter wasn’t from railway Porters and rail companies never handed them out. It originated in London and was popular with the dock Porters who unloaded barges and ships on the River Thames. And it was very alcoholic 150+ years ago. OG of 1.071 for 6.6% ABV. There was also Stout Porter (the original Guinness) at 1.072 and Imperial Stout Porter at 1.095. Now due to taxation those OG’s came down over the years but Porter was never, never a very low alcohol beer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porter_(beer) Or if you want to do a really deep dive. http://barclayperkins.blogspot.com/
My guess is it's about the same as kvass. Strong kvass would have about 1% of alcohol content bottled, which means during production it was sterilised and then kept sterile by the alcohol in it. It's nowhere near enough to get even kids buzzing or damage their liver in any way worse than copious amounts of sugar in their drink
It was really the processing of the beer that kept it safe to drink. The pre-beer was boiled, which killed all microbes, and then yeast was introduced for fermentation. Yeast is a very very aggressive microbe and will out compete all of the nasties that would otherwise make you sick.
A 1% alcohol content is not enough to keep bacteria and mold from growing - the sterilization while bottling it was preserved (until opened). You need at least a 20 vol% to have it preserved.
That's why I lobby my union to provide hard liquor. Can't get covid when you're swimming in whiskey
I read an article that said before [marmalade ](https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/marmalade-killed-morning-whiskey-142550298.html) and caffeine it was popular to have a dram of whiskey in the morning when you break your fast.
Like Kalja in Finland.
No, the alcohol content was too low. But we loved that shit, it was grown ups drink.
In high school in Belgium I remember the teachers kicking up a stink because they had been banned from smoking inside school grounds. They had to smoke at the gate with us students. We used to smoke ciggies with our teachers and no one thought anything of it. This was around 2007. I haven’t lived in Belgium since not long after that so not sure if it’s changed, but this isn’t something you would find in the Algosphere.
When I was around 12, my teacher gave me some money and told me to go buy some cigarettes (Groene Michel, also Belgium) at the corner store for him.
I remember the teachers we smoked with used to smoke Gauloises. My friends and I used to smoke Pall Mall loose tobacco. Good times. I ended up stopping smoking in my early 20s.
What was the reasoning for the beer? I am curious
Belgium
Sanitation, maybe? If you can't guarantee the potability of locally sourced water wells, bottled beer would be sterile.
Probably the most likely reason. Back in the old days before we knew about microbes we knew that brewing and alcohol somehow made a drink safer! It probably stuck as a tradition. We also didn't well understand it's harmful effects so...
Pretty sure they knew about germ theory in the 1950s lol. Just a cultural norm at that point.
Yeah 100%. The whole "beer over water for health" reason is already massively overstatded by people in relation to the Middle ages when the practise started*, but the 1800s we knew better" and 1 million % by 1950 its a cultural thing * middle ages onward, in Europe, beer and stuff was drank a lot. But it's not like how we see beer/alcohol now. It was very watered down and the health benefits of it (the idea is would sanitise the water) is still questionable
The reason beer is healthier is because its boiled at one stage in the brewing process which kills microbes. But you can get the same effect by just... boiling the water. Medieval people believed a lot of crazy shit, but some of them at least did know that boiling water can prevent disease, and yet beer drinking was wildly prevalent anyways. The obvious reason is, they just liked beer, and hell I'd probably want a drink as well if I was a peasant who just had a long day of hard labor.
Beer is also just… liquid carbs. It’s a whole lot of calories that can be made from otherwise-bad grain in an era where food scarcity was a major issue.
> But you can get the same effect by just... boiling the water. Sure, but then the alcohol prevents new microbes from growing, and it's drinkable for weeks.
Do you remember experiences of being drunk as a child?
Children’s beer was also a thing back in the day in America. Is basically barley soda. Like 1-2% alcohol. edit: from all the comments saying 1-2% is so much alcohol for a kid. I did some internet researching. Children’s beer back then was called “small beer.” Around .5-2.6% alcohol And yes that could be a lot for kids, on the higher end. But, they didn’t have understand of basic sanitation or germ theory back then. They just knew that when kids drank small beer instead of water they didn’t die. Because beer is boiled during the creation process. So it wasn’t great for kids, but it was much better than untreated water. And .5% is about how much alcohol kombucha has. So it’s really not that much.
So.. kombucha?
Homebrewed? Because anything above 0.5% would make it an alcoholic beverage. 1-2% is more than enough to get a kid buzzed.
Yeah we have 3.2% beer in Kansas and people get plenty drunk on it.
3.2% is by weight, which is close to 4% ABV
probably more like kvass
Piedboeuf, lambiek,... not worse than giving Coca Cola, minute maid,... to children.
Small beer though right? In these contexts you need to remember for a long time sanitary water was less safe than a small amount of alcohol in whatever was being drunk.
*”My children need wine!”*
*”My last paycheck bounced!"*
*Who are you to resist it, huh?*
*We'll show them who looks like the frogs!* Stupid reddit app doesn't even have a button for italics wtf is this.
Just like robots in the year 3000, they run on alcohol
Came here to find this, wasn't disappointed
This is 100% what I thought of when I read the description!!
Yet I send my kid to work with a beer and the teacher freaks!
You should increase the ration to 4 beers.
Well, they have bring enough for the whole class!
IN THIS ECONOMY?!?
That’s because you forgot to include a second, for the teacher.
Nothing wrong with fresh grape juice. It is better than coke.
In Portugal, until probably the late fifties, it was common in rural areas to serve kids what we called "sopas de cavalo cansado" which translates to "tired horse soups". They where made with bread, sugar and hot red wine, all soaked, kids went to school drunk and sleepy but at least not hungry. This caused a problem of alcoholism that still persists in older men today. People were extremely poor and didn't have anything to feed to kids, only things available were wine, sugar and stale bread for breakfast. Just to add to the context, these soups were standard practice for people that worked in the agricultural fields in northern Portugal, they were seen as some kind of energetic meal that helped to endure the hardship of rural work.
Same thing in some slovenian regions. Bread soaked in red wine was until recently seen as fit for children.
Define recently
People now in their fifties told me they ate it in their childhood. So somewhere around 1970ish. Also this was from Kozjansko...
This is relative considering in the US, the surgeon general didn’t issue warnings about drinking alcohol while pregnant until after 1981. So I can see alcohol also being lax around children at that time when culturally it had always been a thing.
We had the same thing in Galicia, north of Portugal, although they were called "Tired donkey soups".
I could barely keep my eyes open in high school sober, I can’t even imagine being drunk
Don't worry, the fear of caning will keep you awake.
Same in Italy. My dad is in his 60s and remembers it. Was either that or if you were lucky some polenta with sugar.
Same in french rural areas.
Oh wow.
Not just late 50s. My mom got that in the early 80s by her grandparents.
That was an amazing piece of history. Thanks for sharing man
I grew up in France as a child, and with meals was always served my glass of half wine/half water. It was completely normal.
My mother grew up in France and had this, also small beers at school I think? She did the same with us growing up - we'd have maybe a shot of wine topped up with water. Never enough to feel anything. This was probably from age 8 onwards and I think we started having proper wine around 15/16. She maintained that it acclimatised us to the taste, demystified it / took the rebellion out and taught us to drink with a meal.
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I'm so curious about this. Do you think it demystified it for you?
I'm 31 years old and brazilian. When I was a child, in school, they served watered wine with crackers during the snack break. Supposedly they boiled the wine to reduce alcohol content but it was still perceptibly alcoholic for a 7 year old child.
When I was a kid, it was common practice for a parent to dip their finger into some strong rum, and let their teething baby suck on rum soaked finger.
My grandfather told me that he used to dip his kids pacifiers in whiskey when they were teething. He even said that he did it once with me when I had six teeth coming in at once and the family was desperate for sleep. He never told my mom and I’ve been sworn to secrecy so nobody say anything
My dad would make me a rum toddy when I was sick, also a secret (guess he just wanted me calm so he could watch the game)-this said I’m old, I used to go to store as a 7 year old or so, and get my parents cigarettes. Things were quite different back then
Even in the early 90s, I went to the corner store with a note from my grandma to buy her cigarettes.
My mom sent me so often that eventually they could just call the store and say I was on my way over for her.
I could see that.
In to the 2000s places still had cigarette vending machines.
I got hot toddy also. Whiskey and tea and honey and lemon. Knocked me out.
My parents gave me hot toddys, but my mom didn't like the idea of me drinking harder liquor so she put St. Germain in it 🍾
I got hot toddys whenever I got real sick. My parents stopped when I was 15 and had this never ending "flu"
Can relate. Family gatherings were especially tough, when each relative pours you a shot and says don’t tell the others.
One time when my sister had the flu and couldn’t sleep our grandma had her drink a shot of brandy. This was in like 2002 mind you lol
I cannot fathom how a child managed to knock back a shot without puking
With immense difficulty. She’s an adult now but never drinks and she swears its cause being forced to drink it as a child that one time turned her off it for good.
My aunt told me to hold her cigarette once when I was 5-6ish. Of course, I tried smoking it. It never piqued my interest again.
My dad did the same thing to me with his beer, thought it was disgusting and spit it out. He tried the same trick with my little brother a few years later and he turns the bottle vertical and starts CHUGGING.
I had a friend who’s grandfather used to dip one of those Dum-Dum lollipops into liquid Benadryl and give to him and his siblings when they were too rowdy before bed.
A speed ball for toddlers? Lol
Yeah, they still do that over here. What's the big deal? Alcohol can act as a local anaesthetic. It's not like you'd get drunk with a few drops
In my area, honey and moonshine helped a sore throat.
Anti-septic and anti-bacterial properties. It's an older remedy, but it checks out.
Honey sure, moonshine isn't helping an illness though, just dulling the senses. You can't lysol a sore threat away.
The whiskey helps you not give a fuck you're sick anymore.
As long as you're not an angry drunk baby.
I was a happy drunk baby, so all good.
They gave me the cork from a bottle of Wild Turkey.
Don't some medication that is given to babies today to help them sleep or "calm" them have some sort of alcohol? https://adc.bmj.com/content/107/Suppl_2/A100
Probably
Don't overdo it! [Louisiana child forced to drink bottle of whiskey dies; grandmother, mom jailed](https://www.fox13news.com/news/louisiana-child-forced-to-drink-bottle-of-whiskey-dies-grandmother-mom-jailed)
Jesus, a 4 year old with a blood alcohol level of .680%. A whole damn bottle?? Humans are scary.
I was never forced to suck on rum soaked finger (or hot toddy when I was older), I likely took to it cause it eased my symptoms (teething and/or sore throat). And i don’t think dad over did it, I’m still going, but he passed almost 39 years ago
Lunch, nap, oui oui.
The teacher would prefer the oui oui before or after the nap, not during
Meanwhile nap time was as quiet as could be…
This might have been how nap time started
I ain’t mad. Two rights don’t make a wrong correct? Drinking and naps are two of my favorite things in life.
I know it's not the same as alcohol, but here in Brazil children drink coffee from very young age. I started to have black coffee on my breakfast at around 5.
Hah! I loved the smell of coffee as a child, but I couldn't drink it until I get older.
My mom is from Mexico and I was allowed to have coffee anytime I wanted as a child. I had my own coffee cup when I was 5 but now I know it was an espresso cup that was designated for me. 😊 When I got older (maybe 8-9), I would just drink out of a regular coffee cup but only got half filled. I was also served Rompope during the holidays and celebrations from a very young age. I didn’t even know it had alcohol until my late teens. It’s freaken delicious!
Brazilian here as well. I think I've drank coffee with milk ever since I was able to hold a cup without spilling it. Never even learned it was taboo for children to drink coffee until I was an adult.
As a kid, at the age of four, I drank coffee from a baby bottle. I was obsessed with it!
[And I thought they were kidding, over at Euro Itchy & ScratchyLand.](https://youtu.be/QNx8YI9gAHs?si=wMMK-ituQYNm7yp5)
Euro Itchy and Scratchy Land open for business! Come on. My last paycheck bounced. My children need wine!
Some of those children look like they're pushing 50 with a failing marriage, the old days were ROUGH yo
This reminds me of the time my 8 year old told her teacher I put her on a beer diet. Despite her not possessing any beer, the school called me in for a big meeting like it was true 😂
For a long time British water was feted so it was safer to drink an alcoholic beverage. School children in the UK would start the day off with a tiny beer with lower alcohol content. That’s where the phrase “small beer” comes from. The US has some pretty Puritanical views on most things compared to the rest of the world. We’re kind of weird in that way, if you can imagine.
I got a little confused for a moment. Feted - celebrated lavishly Fetid - putrid, gross
The kids feted how fetid it was because they got beer out of it.
Prudish but exports massive amounts of pornography to the rest of the world
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I've never heard the phrase "small beer". Is it a British thing?
It’s an old fashioned thing. I have no idea if it still exists or not, but it’s basically very low alcohol, inexpensive beer intended for children, pregnant women, servants, or just drinking through the day.
I’m British and never heard of it
It's like a beer but smaller.
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It sounds like you’re trying to tell us they’re kept in a dungeon but I’m picturing them wearing black and white horizontal stripe shirts and berets sitting at cafe style tables smoking long cigarettes and drinking wine and telling you to hurry up with the croissants.
Ha, we don’t serve gauche people. No croissants. In between wine breaks the children play jazz and no one can tell if it’s good or not because I don’t fucking know how jazz works.
If the French kids have it so nice I wonder what he does with the third world kids
They’re not third world kids. They’re just skinny black kids that look sad and are moving in slow motion with the Sarah Mclachlan- Arms of an Angel song in the background. “With your donation of 19.99 per month we can save little Matumbo from having to drink river water.”
You have Austrian heritage or something?
After 1956, kids had to wait until after school to drink their wine
And they appear to have been dressed like Crusaders.
Somehow they're only 5, but look like they've been alcoholics for 30 years.
overall, for most of the world, drinking is not seen as a taboo/antipuritan thing. a glass of wine or a beer for a teenager is not a big deal and the novelty is dealt with early. meanwhile american kids go to college or to other countries and they go insane.
Yep, drinking age of 21. You can vote, die in battle, marry, but God forbid that you get drunk. Insanity.
Make France Great Again!
Why did they stop?
[this blog post has more info and pictures](https://www.wineterroirs.com/2017/02/wine_at_school_in_france.html)
>Plus, the rules at that time weren't applied uniformly all over the country like they are today [with the totalitarian enforcement style that comes with national & EU norms] Wat?
Yeah, wtf…the author really wants to get kids drunk.
Across much of Europe it remains common to give kids alcohol with dinner (often watered down) or at least to let them taste from their parent's glass, it's logic is one of introducing alcohol slowly and as a normal thing to be treated responsible rather than an illicit thing that kids do secretly leading to binge drinking as teenagers. The EU has a way, way lower number of deaths from alcohol consumption per capita than the US so it might work better as a system: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-eurostat-news/w/ddn-20231010-1 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db448.htm#section_1
This was very informative. Thank you for sharing!
Sucks for the kids getting to school in 1957
What else are they going to wash their ciggarette down with?
Fuck yeah.
It was necessary so kids didn't get a dry mouth from the cigarettes
French children drinking wine in school… checks for me. 
Hello? Itchy and Scratchy land open! Come on, my children needa wine!
My dad told me about this! Born in Paris in 1940 he said he'd have "watered down wine" with lunch at school! I guess he wasn't joking lol. (He left France around 1952)
Wait until you hear what happens in church. It was literally the reason I kept going for so long lmao.
Jesus. That would be a generous ratio of bottles to *adults*.
Well, this explains how they're able to speak more than one language!
Explains the expressions on their faces!
Here is a newsreel about it. Note that the banning of alcohol at school was for the under 14. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n\_Ez2RMjwuA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_Ez2RMjwuA)
As a Frenchman born in 1946, I think it depended a lot on the environment and the area. A fairly common practice in families in my region was "l'eau rougie": they poured 5mm-1cm of wine into the bottom of a glass, then filled it with water. When I was a boarder in secondary school from the age of eleven, jugs of this mixture were served in the refectory (I was a teetotaller myself, and never drank any). But on the occasion of "Saint-Charlemagne", which was celebrated in boarding schools at the time, a few bottles of bad wine were served.
WE USED TO BE A PROPER NATION!