For humans, food is the satisfaction of an essential basic need. So it's no wonder, that our diverse culture, with all its different branches and roots, has produced a variety of dishes over the millennia, preparation options and nutritional concepts.
For example, it used to be meat, that dominated the menu in many households; even earlier it was potatoes, and before that it was bread and other grain products. In principle, each of these nutritional concepts had the same goal: to keep people healthy and alive.
It's only natural, that at a time, where starvation is not a phenomenon like it is today, which you as a German no longer know in your home country, probably the most important ingredient on the menu has always been the energy content.
Hard work required hard calories, and people, who were used to it, to take a seat at a sparsely set table, Of course, we measure food largely according to its energy content – after all, supplying the human body with fuel is one of the most important and fundamental functions of nutrition.
Today we can have calories in such abundance, that we can even kill ourselves with them. Restriction is therefore the motto – we all know, that we must reduce the calorie intake of our bodies to an appropriate level while still ensuring the supply of nutrients is sufficient.