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Why Don't Americans Eat Pudding For Christmas Dinner?

Published: Wednesday, December 20, 2017 - 4:28pm
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If you haven’t decided what you’ll be serving for Christmas dinner, time is running out, and, if you’re wanting to think outside the culinary box, The Show’s Mark Brodie is here with some advice.

Maybe you’re thinking ham or turkey, or a goose, but what about — a pudding. And, not the chocolate or vanilla kind you make out of a box, but a real, old-fashioned pudding.

It turns out, Americans don’t really eat them much anymore and haven’t for a while.

To find out why that is, I spoke with Helen Zoe Veit, an associate professor of history at Michigan State University, where she studies the history of food. She wrote a piece all about this, and I asked her first to define our terms — what kind of pudding we’re talking about here — not the dessert kinds of pudding we generally think about now.

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